Responding to idea that it would be good for slaveholders to provide Bibles for slaves, Douglass says: “Do they suppose that slaveholders, in open violation of their laws, will allow their slaves to have the Bible? How do they mean to get the Bible among the slaves? It cannot go by itself – it must be carried — of what value is the Bible to one who cannot read its contents? …. the immediate and only effect of their efforts must be to turn off attention from the main and only momentous connected with the slave, and absorb energy and money in giving to him the Bible, that ought to be used in giving him to himself ….” In the Liberator, January 28, 1848
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