![]() It was heard in every sound and seen in every thing. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. in moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. it opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. ![]() “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.” If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. Men may not get all they pay for in this world but they must certainly pay for all they get. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. "This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters." ![]() Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. If there is no struggle there is no progress. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. “Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other-devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.” The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. The dealers in the bodies of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. Never was there a clearer case of 'stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.' I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. “I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of the land.
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