Historical voices

It was thus I was led to seek a refuge in monarchial England, from the dangers of republican slavery.

I became myself painfully alive to the liability which surrounded me, and which might at any moment scatter all my proud hopes, and return me to a doom worse than death.

It would be a grateful duty to speak of the noble young men, who forsook ease and pleasure, as did White, Gay, and Monroe, and endured all manner of privations in the cause of the enslaved and down-trodden of my race.

They were not more amiable than brave, for they never seemed to ask, What will the world say? but walked straight forward in what seemed to them the line of duty, please or offend whomsoever it might.

They looked at slavery as a creature of law; we regarded it as a creature of public opinion.

I never go there without endeavoring to see that tree, which, like the cause it sheltered, has grown large and strong and imposing.

It would be easy to silence anti-slavery agitation if refusing its agents the use of halls and churches could effect that result.

Her proud boast that no slave had ever been delivered up to his master within her borders did not hinder her hatred to anti-slavery.

Could they know slavery as I knew it, they would hasten to the work of its extinction.

All that the American people needed, I thought, was light.

I had the honor to be chosen one of the agents to assist in these proposed conventions, and I never entered upon any work with more heart and hope.

This argument was certainly good enough as against the church, but good for nothing as against the demands of justice and equality.

Regarding this as the fruit of slaveholding prejudice, and being determined to fight the spirit of slavery wherever I might find it, I resolved to avoid this car, though it sometimes required some courage to do so.

When people found that I would be heard, they saw it was the part of wisdom to open the way for me.

The abolitionists had passed the Red Sea of mobs, and had conquered the right to a respectful hearing.

True men they were, who could accept welcome at no man’s table where I was refused.

There is something in the world above fixed rules and the logic of right and wrong, and there is some foundation for recognizing works, which may be called works of supererogation.

I confess, however, that while I was entirely honest in urging them to go, and saw no principle that should bind them to stay and suffer with me, I always felt a little nearer to those who did not take my advice and persisted in sharing my…

No colored man was allowed abaft the wheel, and in all seasons of the year, in heat or cold, wet or dry, the deck was his only place.

I was several times dragged from the cars for the crime of being colored.

They took me with earnest hand to their homes and hearths, and made me feel that though I wore the burnished livery of the sun I was still a countryman and kinsman of whom they were never ashamed.

They received me as a man and a brother, when I was new from the house of bondage, and had few of the graces derived from free and refined society.

They had their own opinions, were independent, and called no man master.

I think that our labors in Rhode Island during this Dorr excitement did more to abolitionize the State, than any previous, or subsequent work.