“When I was about thirteen years old, and had succeeded in learning to read, every increase of knowledge, especially anything respecting the free states, was an additional weight to the almost intolerable burden of my thought, 'I am a slave for life'. To my bondage I could see no end. It was a terrible reality, and I shall never be able to tell how sadly that thought chafed my young spirit.”

—  Frederick Douglass

Source: 1880s, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), pp. 102–103.

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Frederick Douglass 274
American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman 1818–1895

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