Make a man a slave, and you rob him of moral responsibility. Freedom of choice is the essence of all accountability.
 Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). copy citation

Context

“Slaveholders I hold to be individually and collectively responsible for all the evils which grow out of the horrid relation, and I believe they will be so held at the judgment, in the sight of a just God. Make a man a slave, and you rob him of moral responsibility. Freedom of choice is the essence of all accountability. But my kind readers are, probably, less concerned about my opinions, than about that which more nearly touches my personal experience; albeit, my opinions have, in some sort, been formed by that experience.” source