He had written his character on the living parchment of most of their backs, and left them seamed and callous; my back (thanks to my early removal to Baltimore) was yet tender.
In his autobiography, Douglass uses a vivid metaphor to describe the physical scars of slavery on others, contrasting it with his own experience.
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More from Frederick Douglass
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.
Still another ground of hope I find in the fact that colored men are strong in their gratitude to benefactors, and firm in their political convictions.
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.