The full speech can be found at: http://
docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/support5.html.
...the slave in the United States is one who is in the possession of an irresponsible owner, who can do with [him] what he pleases. God has given to the slave a mind; but that mind may be improved only as the slave owner may choose... If he supposes that teaching a slave to read militates against the value of the slave, he has power to withhold that knowledge from him, and he exerts upon him that power. If he thinks that religion militates against his interest, he withholds it from the slave, who only lives for his master, not for himself...
The slave has no rights; he is a being with all the capacities of a man in the condition of the brute. Such is the slave in the American plantations. He can decide no question relative to his own actions; the slave-holder decides what he shall eat or drink, when and to whom he shall speak, when he shall work, and how long he shall work; when he shall marry, and how long the marriage shall be binding, and what shall be the cause of its dissolutionÑwhat is right and wrong, virtue or vice. The slave-holder becomes the sole disposer of the mind, soul and body of his slave, who has no rights, all of which are taken from him. This is the condition of three millions of human beings in the United States.
I am not one of those slaves in the United States who have experienced much cruelty in my own person. Nevertheless... I have known what it is to be dragged fifteen miles to the human flesh market and be sold like a brute beast. I am from a slave-breeding stateÑwhere slaves are reared for the market as horses, sheep, and swine areÉ The slave is driven by the beating of the lash, and often, immediately he is landed, is branded with the hot iron, often his ears are cut and his teeth drawn, so as to mark him in case he runs away, when he advertises him and so brings him back to bondage.
I have seen women, with their frantic children surrounding them, tied to a post, and lashed by an overseer until their blood covered their garments. The children were screaming for the release of their mother, while the husband was standing by with his hands tied, and after his wife was castigated, he received the same punishment. This is the state of things in Maryland, where slavery exists in its mildest form; but these things are necessary for the support of slavery in the United States. These cases are not the exceptions; they are of every-day occurrence in the slave-states of America, and also in every large plantation. Men not only confess that they do these things, but publish the facts to the world, thus showing that so far from being like exceptions to the rule, or condemned by public opinion, they are sustained and upheld by public opinion.
All these cruelties are necessary for the maintenance of slavery. The slave-holder could not maintain his slaves without the right to torture them. The fear of death must be exercised. As my brother Garrison said, men do not go voluntarily to take upon them the yoke of slavery; they must have the fear of death before them, or they will not become slaves, at least profitable slaves. If we grant slavery to be right, then we must grant all its machinery to be rightÑsuch as the thumb-screw, the dungeons, the cat-o'-nine tails, and all the paraphernalia which are indispensable for the maintenance of slavery.
From Sheffield
Mercury, September 12, 1846.
Found at Documenting
the American South
(http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/support5.html)