"CONSCIENCE" FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Frederick Douglass was a force of nature. More than another exalted, iconic freedom fighter , his sapient wisdom, reflected in his writings and speeches do much more than to mark the frightening road from slavery to freedom for his person. Douglass' writings and speeches demarcate, differentiate , illustrate mostly scientifically, analytically, accurately elements disassociated, distorted, demeaned in the slave in order to disable him, to reduce him, to remove him and her from the realm of divinity into the despond of depravity. "Doctor" Douglass' diagnoses and prognoses are true in 2019 as then. Truth never dies. He wrote: "It is only when we contemplate the slave as a moral and intellectual being that we can adequately comprehend the unparalleled enormity of slavery, and the intense criminality of the slaveholder..... "The slave is a man, 'the image of God', but 'a little lower than the angels'; possessing a soul, eternal and indestructible; capable of endless happiness, or immeasurable woe; a creature of hopes and fears, of affections and passions, of joys and sorrows, and he is endowed with those mysterious powers by which man soars above the things of time and space and sense, and grasps , with undying tenacity , the elevating and sublimely glorious idea of God. It is such a being that is smitten and blasted. The first work of slavery is to mar and deface those characteristics of its victims which distinguish men from things, and persons from property. Its first aim is to destroy all sense of high moral and religious responsibility. It reduces man to a mere machine. It cuts him off from his Maker, and hides him from the laws of God, and leaves him to grope his way from time to eternity in the dark , under the despotic control of a frail, depraved, and sinful fellow-man. As the serpent charmer of India is compelled to extract the deadly teeth of his venomous prey before he is able to handle him with impunity , so the slaveholder must strike down the conscience of the slave before he can obtain the entire mastery over his victim. "It is, then , the first business of the enslaver of men to blunt, deaden, and destroy the central principle of human responsibility. Conscience is to the individual soul, and to society, what the law of gravitation is to the universe. It holds society together; it is the basis of all trust and confidence ; it is the pillar of all moral rectitude. Without it, suspicion would take the place of trust; vice would be more than a match for virtue; men would prey upon each other, like wild beasts of the desert; and earth would become a 'hell'." P. 420-421, MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM, "The Nature of Slavery, December 1, 1850," by Frederick Douglass (1994).