In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but dangerously so.
In his autobiography, Douglass describes his mistress's initial struggle to reconcile her humanity with the demands of slaveholding.
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The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.
For the moment the northern lamb was transformed into a lion, and his roar was terrible.