[My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass]@TWC D-Link book
My Bondage and My Freedom

CHAPTER XXI
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Nothing is more evident, than that such disclosures are a positive evil to the slaves remaining, and seeking to escape.

In publishing such accounts, the anti-slavery man addresses the slaveholder, _not the slave;_ he stimulates the former to greater watchfulness, and adds to his facilities for capturing his slave.

We owe something to the slaves, south of Mason and Dixon's line, as well as to those north of it; and, in discharging the duty of aiding the latter, on their way to freedom, we should be careful to do nothing which would be likely to hinder the former, in making their escape from slavery.
Such is my detestation of slavery, that I would keep the merciless slaveholder profoundly ignorant of the means of flight adopted by the slave.

He{251} should be left to imagine himself surrounded by myriads of invisible tormentors, ever ready to snatch, from his infernal grasp, his trembling prey.

In pursuing his victim, let him be left to feel his way in the dark; let shades of darkness, commensurate with his crime, shut every ray of light from his pathway; and let him be made to feel, that, at every step he takes, with the hellish purpose of reducing a brother man to slavery, he is running the frightful risk of having his hot brains dashed out by an invisible hand.
But, enough of this.


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