It was, at least, necessary for her to have some training, and some hardening, in the exercise of the slaveholder’s prerogative, to make her equal to forgetting my human nature and character, and to treating me as a thing destitute of a moral or an intellectual nature.
From his autobiography, Douglass explains how his mistress had to be trained and hardened to treat him as property rather than a human being.
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It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.
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.