He is whipped oftenest, who is whipped easiest; and that slave who has the courage to stand up for himself against the overseer, although he may have many hard stripes at the first, becomes, in the end, a freeman, even though he sustain the formal relation of a slave.
Douglass asserts that resistance, despite initial suffering, ultimately leads to a form of inner freedom for the enslaved, contrasting with the fate of the submissive.
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More from Frederick Douglass
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.