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LIFE: AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

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was a fact still more strange, and one which, until its occurrence, I could
never have thought possible. To me, Capt. Auld had sustained the relation of
master~a relation which I had held in extremest abhorrence, and which, for
forty years, I had denounced in all bitterness of spirit and fierceness of
speech. He had struck down my personality, had subjected me to his will,
made property of my body and soul, reduced me to a chattel, hired me out to
a noted slave breaker to be worked like a beast and flogged into submission;
he had taken my hard earnings, sent me to prison, offered me for sale, broken
up my Sunday-school. forbidden me to teach my fellow slaves to read on
pain of nine and thirty lashes on my bare back: he had sold my body to his
brother Hugh. and pocketed the price of my flesh and blood without any
apparent disturbance of his conscience. I. on my part. had traveled through
kngth and breadth ofthis country and of England, holding up this conduct of his in common with that of other slaveholders to the reprobation of
all men who would listen to my words. I had made his name and his deeds
familiar to the world by my writings in four different languages, yet here were
after four decades once more face to face---

11 ere a Iler four decades once more face to face~he on his bed. aged and
tremulous. drawing near the sunset of life. and I. his former slave, United
States :\1arshal of the District of Columbia. holding his hand and in friendly
cnn1 ersation " ·ith him. in a sort of final settlement of past differences, preparatory to his stepping into his grave. where all distinctions are at an end,
and where the great and the small. the sla1e and his master. are reduced to
thl' same le1cl. Had I been asked in the days of sla1ery to visit this man, I
should have regarded the invitation as one to put fetters on my ankles and
handcuffs on my wrists. It would ha,·e been an invitation to the auctionblock and the slave 11 hip. I had no business with this man under the old
regime but to keep out of his 11ay. But now that slal'ery was destroyed, and
the sl,m.: and the master stood upon equal ground. I was not only willing to
meet h11n. but was wry glad to do so . The conditions were favorable for
remembrance of all his good deeds. and generous extenuation of all his evil
ones. I le was to me no longer a sla, eholder either in fact or in spirit, and I
regarded him as I did myself: a victim of the circumstances of birth, education. law. and custom.
Our courses had been detennined for us. not by us. We had both been
flung. by powers that did not ask our consent. upon a mighty current of life.
11 h1ch we could neither resist nor control. By this current he was a master.
and I a slave: but now our lives were verging towards a point where differences disappear. where even the constancy of hate breaks down. where the
clouds of pride. passion. and selfishness vanish before the brightness of inti-

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