Letter to His Former Master

Thomas Auld, Sir - The long and intimate, though by no means friendly, relation which unhappily subsisted between you and myself, leads me to hope that you will easily account for the great liberty which I now take in addressing you in this open and public manner. I am your fellow man, but not your slave. The same spirit which moved you to tear me from my mother, and sell my sisters into bondage, I now see moving you to keep my family in slavery. I had two sisters, but I never saw them after I was eight years old. My mother died when I was ten years old, having been kept from me by your tyrannical system. You know that I was a slave to you, but I was a man before I was a slave. I am now a free man, standing here in a free state, surrounded by free people, speaking my mind without fear. I will not ask you to release my family from bondage - I demand it as a matter of right and justice. The wrongs you have inflicted upon my grandmother, my sisters, my mother, and myself, cry out for redress. You may hold their bodies in chains, but their spirits, like mine, were born free and will one day break those chains. I am no longer your chattel, but a man who speaks for all those still in bondage. Frederick Douglass