Historical voices

Yet despite of this destitution there were many men and women among the slaves who were true and faithful to each other through life.

Slavery provided no means for the honorable perpetuation of the race.

The fear of God and the hope of heaven were sufficient to sustain many slave women amidst the snares and dangers of their strange lot; but they were ever at the mercy of the power, passion, and caprice of their owners.

It was one of the damning characteristics of slavery, that it robbed its victims of every earthly incentive to a holy life.

They could cripple or kill without fear of consequences.

They wielded the lash without any sense of responsibility.

This treatment was a part of the system, rather than a part of the man.

He was evidently a wretched man, at war with his own soul and all the world around him.

Reason is imprisoned here and passions run wild.

A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.

He could not only be deaf to the appeals of the helpless against the aggressor, but he could himself commit outrages deep, dark, and nameless.

He could, when it suited him, appear to be literally insensible to the claims of humanity.

While this lad could not associate with ignorance without sharing its shade, he could not give his black playmates his company without giving them his superior intelligence as well.

There was even at that time something a little inconsistent and laughable, in my mind, in the blending of prayer with punishment.

Everybody in the South seemed to want the privilege of whipping somebody else.

It goes sadly against the grain to address and treat a negro as one would address and treat a white man.

It was seldom that a slave, however venerable, was honored with a surname in Maryland, and so completely has the south shaped the manners of the north in this respect that their right to such honor is tardily admitted even now.

Strange and even ridiculous as it may seem, among a people so uncultivated and with so many stern trials to look in the face, there is not to be found among any people a more rigid enforcement of the law of respect to elders than is…

Slaves knew enough of the Orthodox theology at the time, to consign all bad slaveholders to hell, and they often fancied such persons wishing themselves back again to wield the lash.

Though civilization was in many respects shut out, nature could not be.

There were, of course, no conflicting rights of property, for all the people were the property of one man, and they could themselves own no property.

The criminal was always dumb--and no slave was allowed to testify, other than against his brother slave.

He was generally accuser, judge, jury, advocate, and executioner.

The fact is, public opinion in such a quarter, the reader must see, was not likely to be very efficient in protecting the slave from cruelty.