On the recordJanuary 1, 1845
It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slaveholding life, to see with what wonderful ease a slaveholder can find things, of which to make occasion to whip a slave.
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgIt would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slaveholding life, to see with what wonderful ease a slaveholder can find things, of which to make occasion to whip a slave.
In his autobiography, Douglass comments on the arbitrary nature of punishment and the ease with which slaveholders found reasons to inflict violence.
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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.
I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.
Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.