Grim, cold, and unapproachable by all genial influences from communities without, there it stands; full three hundred years behind the age, in all that relates to humanity and morals.
Douglass offers a scathing indictment of the moral and humanitarian stagnation of the plantation system, describing it as isolated and centuries behind its time.
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This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.
Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.
True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.