The over-work, and the brutal chastisements of which I was the victim, combined with that ever-gnawing and soul-devouring thought--“I am a slave--a slave for life--a slave with no rational ground to hope for freedom”--rendered me a living embodiment of mental and physical wretchedness.
From his autobiography, Douglass describes the overwhelming physical and psychological toll of slavery, which reduced him to a state of utter despair and wretchedness.
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His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.
I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.
The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.