It was a greater luxury than slavery could afford, to allow a black slave-mother a horse or a mule, upon which to travel twenty-four miles, when she could walk the distance.
Douglass illustrates the harsh conditions of slavery by noting the denial of even simple transportation for a slave mother to visit her child.
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More from Frederick Douglass
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
The vote of the colored man, formerly beaten down and stamped out by intimidation, is now revived, sought, and defended by powerful allies, and this from no transient sentiment of the moment, but from the permanent laws controlling the…
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.