The slaveholder, were he kind or cruel, was a slaveholder still, the every-hour-violator of the just and inalienable rights of man, and he was therefore every hour silently but surely whetting the knife of vengeance for his own throat.
Douglass asserts that the nature of slaveholding itself, not the individual master's temperament, constitutes a constant violation of human rights.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.
It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.
We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.