One word from the appraisers, against all preferences or prayers, was enough to sunder all the ties of friendship and affection, and even to separate husbands and wives, parents and children.
Douglass highlights the absolute power of slave appraisers to arbitrarily destroy family bonds and human connections with a single decision.
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In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.