Happy Birthday to iconic abolitionist, writer, and statesman Frederick Douglass. Because he was enslaved, he was never 100% sure of when his actual birthdate was, but knew it was in February. He chose February 14th because his mother used to call him her “Little Valentine.”

Please read his autobiographies. My favorite is My Bondage and My Freedom and one of my favorite quotes from that autobiography is: “My feelings were not the result of any marked cruelty in the treatment I received; they sprung from the consideration of my being a slave at all.”

“It was slavery, not its mere incidents that I hated. I had been cheated. I saw through the attempt to keep me in ignorance. I saw that slaveholders would have gladly made me believe that, in making a slave of me and in making slaves of others,”

“they were merely acting under the authority of God, and I felt to them as to robbers and deceivers. The feeding and clothing me well could not atone for taking my liberty from me.” Douglass’s autobiography highlights how even within the paternalistic system of the Antebellum

South, in which slaves may have liked their owners or had other positive personal interactions with them, the fact that they were enslaved and denied their liberty completely dominated how they felt about their condition. In other words, slaves did not like or accept their

enslavement, even if they may have been satisfied with some aspects of their lives, such as having masters with good personalities, sharing an intimate moment with their owner, or having their material needs met.