I believe the answer is that 'only a person's good deeds remain with him or her in the afterlife'. It is important to be a good person and do good, and everything else is fleeting, it will disappear. But you will be awarded for your good deeds.
Answer:
It's C. It indicates that Douglass believes he deserves freedom.
Rhetorical questions are often used in contexts like these. Almost always, they indicate something similar to this answer. So, yes, it's C.
you should not mistreat somebody or something if they have done nothing to harm you
It is a metaphor for resource distribution proposed by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in 1974.