Freeland, irreligious though he was, it must be stated that he was the best master I ever had until I became my own master and assumed for myself, as I had a right to do, the responsibility of my own existence and the exercise of my own powers.
Douglass reflects on his experience with a relatively less cruel master, emphasizing that true freedom only came when he claimed self-ownership and responsibility for his own life.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
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…
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.