Historical voices

A slave, brought up in the depths of ignorance, assuming to instruct the highly civilized people of the north in the principles of liberty, justice, and humanity!

Very much that was said to me in respect to my imperfect literary attainments, I felt to be most painfully true.

For the first time in the many months spent abroad, I was met with proscription on account of my color.

The grand thing to be done, therefore, was to change this estimation, by disproving his inferiority and demonstrating his capacity for a more exalted civilization than slavery and prejudice had assigned him.

How such a project would have succeeded I do not know, but many reasons led me to prefer that my friends should simply give me the means of obtaining a printing press and materials, to enable me to start a paper, advocating the interests…

I felt it my duty to labor and suffer with my oppressed people in my native land.

For myself, viewing it simply in the light of a ransom, or as money extorted by a robber, and my liberty of more value than one hundred and fifty pounds sterling, I could not see either a violation of the laws of morality or of economy.

I should like to write a book on those countries, if for nothing else, to make grateful mention of the many dear friends whose benevolent actions towards me are ineffaceably stamped upon my memory, and warmly treasured in my heart.

The object of my labors in Great Britain was the concentration of the moral and religious sentiment of its people against American slavery.

I may mention here an incident somewhat amusing and instructive, as it serves to illustrate how easily Americans could set aside their notoriously inveterate prejudice against color, when it stood in the way of their wishes, or when in an…

Since it was you who brought it upon us, take it now and do what you will with it, for we are too weary to bear it.

I cannot do so for this good reason: there are at this moment three millions of the American population, by slavery and prejudice, placed entirely beyond the pale of American temperance societies.

Those who would have been most likely to elect me as a delegate, could not, because they are to-night held in abject slavery in the United States.

It was not an American or a white man’s convention, but one composed of men of all nations and races; and as such, the convention had the right to know all about the temperance cause in every part of the world, and especially to know what…

My own opinion is increasingly that this spirit must be exorcised out of England and America before any substantial good can be effected for the cause of the slave.

I employ a cab--I am seated beside white people--I reach the hotel--I enter the same door--I am shown into the same parlor-- I dine at the same table--and no one is offended.

He possessed the great advantage so valuable to a Parliamentary debater, of being able to make all interruptions serve the purposes of his thought and speech, and carry on a dialogue with several persons without interrupting the rapid…

Listening to him was like standing near the track of a railway train, drawn by a locomotive at the rate of forty miles an hour.

I felt that a great champion of freedom had fallen, and that the cause of the American slave, not less than the cause of his country, had met with a great loss.

He held Ireland within the grasp of his strong hand, and could lead it withersoever he would, for Ireland believed in him and loved him, as she has loved and believed in no leader since.

Such tenderness--such pathos-- such world-embracing love! and, on the other hand, such indignation-- such fiery and thunderous denunciation, and such wit and humor, I never heard surpassed, if equaled, at home or abroad.

He could stir the multitude at will, to a tempest of wrath, or reduce it to the silence with which a mother leaves the cradle-side of her sleeping babe.

One spoke to the cold, calculating side of the British nation, which asks “if the new idea will pay?” The other spoke to the infinite side of human nature--the side which asks, first of all, “is it right? is it just? is it humane?”…

It was interest against interest, but something more and deeper: for, while there was aggrandizement of the landed aristocracy on the one side, there was famine and pestilence on the other.