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I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
I hated slavery, always, and the desire for freedom only needed a favorable breeze, to fan it into a blaze, at any moment. The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past troubled me, and I longed to have a future--a future with hope in it. To be shut up entirely to the past and present, is abhorrent to the human mind; it is to the soul--whose life and happiness is unceasing progress--what the prison is to the body; a blight and mildew, a hell of horrors. The dawning of this, another year, awakened me from my temporary slumber, and roused into life my latent, but long cherished aspirations for freedom. I was now not only ashamed to be contented in slavery, but ashamed to seem to be contented.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, My Bondage and My Freedom
Heaven's blessing must attend all, and freedom must soon be given to the pining millions under a ruthless bondage.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, My Bondage and My Freedom
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other fastened about his own neck.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, speech, Oct. 1883
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