Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom

Douglass Description

He was an abolitionist born into slavery in Maryland. He believed in self-ownership as not only physical form but also mental. He believed the Constitution was inherently pro-slavery and emphasized to enslaved people to become active agents against the government to gain liberation.

Douglass Quote

The remark is not unfrequently made, that slaves are the most contented and happy laborers in the world. They dance and sing, and make all manner of joyful noises— so they do; but it is a great mistake to suppose them happy because they sing. The songs of the slave represents the sorrows, rather than the joys, of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that, when pressed to extremes, it often avails itself of the most opposite methods…Sorrow and desolation have their songs, as well as joy and peace. Slaves sing more to make themselves happy, than to express their happiness (75-76)

Significance: The significance of this quote is that the dancing and singing enslavers saw as enslaved people being content with their bondage is actually the opposite. It’s a cry for help to release psychological trauma.

Douglass Quote

Nature has done almost nothing to prepare men and women to be either slaves or slaveholders (113)

Significance: The significance of this quote is that Douglass believes the roles of slaves and slaveholders were artificially constructed and enforced through social norms that goes against the natural law of humans where all humans no matter the color of their skin are equal under God. Slavery not only corrupts the enslaved but also erodes the enslaver’s innate humanity and sympathy.

Douglass Quote

We were both victims to the same overshadowing evil— she, as mistress, I, as slave (119)

Significance: The significance of this quote is that Mrs. Sophia initially treated Douglass with warmth, but after awhile due to her husband and social corruption, the social system destroyed her moral integrity and turned her into a harsh owner required by the social norms.

Douglass Quote

The morality of free society can have no application to slave society…Make a man a slave and you rob him of moral responsibility. Freedom of choice is the essence of all accountability (140)

Significance: The significance of this quote is the contradiction between morality only applying to those not enslaved should not be allowed. Douglass argues that enslavers destroyed the social contract when enslaving human beings, so they do not have to comply with moral responsibility.

Douglass Quote

My poor mother, like many other slave-women, had many children, but NO FAMILY! (39)

Significance: The significance of this quote is that the system set up destroys black families and reducing them to mere commodities, not being able to experience the feeling of natural kinship.

Douglass Quote

The slave-mother can be spared long enough from the field to endure all the bitterness of a mother’s anguish, when it adds another name to a master’s ledger, but not long enough to receive the joyous reward afforded by the intelligent smiles of her child (42)

Significance: The significance of this quote is that the system set up destroys black families and reducing them to mere commodities, not being able to experience the feeling of natural kinship.

Douglass Quote

Well, my dear reader, this battle with Mr. Covey—undignified as it was, and as I fear my narration of it is—was the turning point in my “life as a slave.” It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of liberty; it brought up my Baltimore dreams, and revived a sense of my own manhood. I was a changed being after that fight. I was nothing before; I WAS A MAN NOW. It recalled to life my crushed self-respect and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to be A FREEMAN. A man, without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him; and even this it cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise (180)

Significance: The significance of this quote is that it was a major turning point in Douglass’s life where he re-fueled his fight for freedom. He not only physically fought against an enslaver but also mentally fought for internal freedom.

Douglass Quote

To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate his power of reason (233)

Significance: The significance of this quote is that enslavers must turn enslaved people into commodities by taking away their literacy, self-awareness, and critical thought.

Douglass Quote

Patrick Henry, to a listening senate, thrilled by his magic eloquence, and ready to stand by him in his boldest flights, could say, ‘GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH,’ and this saying was a sublime one, even for a freeman; but, incomparably more sublime, is the same sentiment, when practically asserted by men accustomed to the lash and chain—men whose sensibilities must have become more or less deadened by their bondage. With us it was a doubtful liberty, at best, that we sought; and a certain, lingering death in the rice swamps and sugar fields, if we failed (207)

Significance: The significance of this quote is that it shows the double standards of America where one instance white Americans are fighting for freedom and are willing to die for the cause while black Americans are doing the same and are getting condemned for it when their conditions are harsher than tyranny under Britain.

Douglass Quote

The thought of being a creature of the present and the past troubled me, and I longed to have a future— a future with hope in it (200)

Significance: The significance of this quote is that Douglass does not want to be stuck in the restrictions of slavery and holding onto the future and hope of it allows him to feel some sort of agency while being physically chained down. The future holds the ability to set goals and build a life of choosing one’s own destiny.

Douglass Quote

The morality of free society can have no application to slave society…Slaveholders I hold to be individually and collectively responsible for all the evils which grow of the horrid relation, and I believe they will be so held at the judgement, in the sight of a just God. Make a man a slave and you rob him of moral responsibility. Freedom of choice is the essence of all accountability (140)

Significance: The significance of this quote is that Douglass believes the oppressors will soon receive just judgement from God as having humans as property is morally corrupted under natural law.

Douglass Quote

The slaveholder, kind or cruel, is a slaveholder still—the every hour violator of the just and inalienable rights of man; and he is, therefore, every hour silently whetting the knife of vengeance for his own throat. He never lisps a syllable in commendation of the fathers of this republic, nor denounces any attempted oppression of himself, without inviting the knife to his own throat, and asserting the rights of rebellion for his own slaves (197)

Significance: The significance of this quote is that no matter how enslavers act, since they are still acting under a morally corrupted system, they are innately violating natural law.

Douglass Quote

A man, without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity.

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