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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: But I had a friend--a sailor--who owned a sailor's protection,
which answered somewhat the purpose of free papers--describing his person,
and certifying to the fact that he was a free American sailor.
The instrument had at its head the American eagle, which gave
it the appearance at once of an authorized document.
This protection, when in my hands, did not describe
its bearer very accurately. Indeed, it called for a man
much darker than myself, and close examination of it would
have caused my arrest at the start.
In order to avoid this fatal scrutiny on the part of railroad
officials, I arranged with Isaac Rolls, a Baltimore hackman,
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