The thought of paying cash for labor that they could formerly extort by the lash did not in anywise improve their disposition to the emancipated slave, or improve his own condition.
Reflecting on the immediate aftermath of emancipation, Douglass describes the continued animosity of former slaveholders towards freedmen.
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My grandmother was all the world to me, and the thought of being separated from her was a most unwelcome suggestion to my affections and hopes.
It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.