I remember the chain, the gag, the bloody whip; the death-like gloom overshadowing the broken spirit of the fettered bondman; the appalling liability of his being torn away from wife and children, and sold like a beast in the market.
From his autobiography, Douglass recounts the specific, brutal instruments and conditions of slavery that he personally remembers and condemns.
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No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.