Historical voices

They had to deal not with earth, wood, and stone, but with men; and by every regard they had for their safety and prosperity they had need to know the material on which they were to work.

It was the interest and business of slaveholders to study human nature, and the slave nature in particular, with a view to practical results; and many of them attained astonishing proficiency in this direction.

For my part, I had become altogether too big for my chains.

I canvassed with Henry and John the subject of slavery, and dashed against it the condemning brand of God’s eternal justice.

This vow only bound me to make good my own individual escape, but my friendship for my brother-slaves was so affectionate and confiding that I felt it my duty, as well as my pleasure, to give them an opportunity to share in my…

The intensity of my desire to be free, quickened by my present favorable circumstances, brought me to the determination to act as well as to think and speak.

Freeland, I am not sure that some kind reader will not condemn me for being over-ambitious, and greatly wanting in humility, when I say the truth, that I now drove from me all thoughts of making the best of my lot, and welcomed only such…

I became not only ashamed to be contented in slavery, but ashamed to seem to be contented, and in my present favorable condition under the mild rule of Mr.

The thought of being only a creature of the present and the past troubled me, and I longed to have a future--a future with hope in it.

I hated slavery always, and my desire for freedom needed only a favorable breeze to fan it to a blaze at any moment.

The thought that men are made for other and better uses than slavery throve best under the gentle treatment of a kind master.

But the kindness of the slave-master only gilded the chain, it detracted nothing from its weight or strength.

He never lisped a syllable in commendation of the fathers of this republic without inviting the sword, and asserting the right of rebellion for his own slaves.

The slaveholder, were he kind or cruel, was a slaveholder still, the every-hour-violator of the just and inalienable rights of man, and he was therefore every hour silently but surely whetting the knife of vengeance for his own throat.

We never undertook anything of any importance which was likely to affect each other, without mutual consultation.

It was not uncommon to charge slaves with great treachery toward each other, but I must say I never loved, esteemed, or confided in men more than I did in these.

Freeland, irreligious though he was, it must be stated that he was the best master I ever had until I became my own master and assumed for myself, as I had a right to do, the responsibility of my own existence and the exercise of my own…

In this Christian country men and women were obliged to hide in barns and woods and trees from professing Christians, in order to learn to read the Holy Bible.

Those dear souls who came to my Sabbath-school came not because it was popular or reputable to do so, for they came with a liability of having forty stripes laid on their naked backs.

What crimes may not be committed under such ruling!

They had settled the question that slavery was right, and by that standard they determined that Sabbath-schools were wrong.

If slavery were right, Sabbath-schools for teaching slaves to read were wrong, and ought to have been put down.

If the slaves learned to read they would learn something more and something worse.

The slaveholders there, like slaveholders elsewhere, preferred to see the slaves engaged in degrading sports, rather than acting like moral and accountable beings.