The first condition of wealth and respectability there, being the ownership of human property, every nerve is strained, by the poor man, to obtain it, and very little regard is had to the manner of obtaining it.
In his autobiography, Douglass describes how the ownership of enslaved people was the primary measure of wealth and social standing in slaveholding states.
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True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.
I believed I should get enough to eat at Covey’s, even if I suffered in other respects, and this to a hungry man is not a prospect to be regarded with indifference.