Under the lax moral life of the plantation, where marriage was a farce, laziness a virtue, and property a theft, a religion of resignation and submission degenerated easily, in less strenuous minds, into a philosophy of indulgence and crime.
This passage describes how the morally corrupt environment of the plantation system led to the degeneration of a religion of submission into a philosophy of indulgence and crime among some enslaved individuals.
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He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.
I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.