The thought, that year after year had passed away, and my resolutions to run away had failed and faded—that I was still a slave, and a slave, too, with chances for gaining my freedom diminished and still diminishing—was not a matter to be slept over easily; nor did I easily sleep over it.
He conveys the deep anguish of remaining enslaved despite his desires for freedom.
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More from Frederick Douglass
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.