Historical voices

In view of this fact, I am happy to attribute any love of letters I may have, not to my presumed Anglo-Saxon paternity, but to the native genius of my sable, unprotected, and uncultivated mother--a woman who belonged to a race whose mental…

That a field-hand should learn to read in any slave State is remarkable, but the achievements of my mother, considering the place and circumstances, was very extraordinary.

I can therefore fondly and proudly ascribe to her, an earnest love of knowledge.

To me it has ever been a grief that I knew my mother so little, and have so few of her words treasured in my remembrance.

I was grander upon my mother’s knee than a king upon his throne.

That night I learned as I had never learned before, that I was not only a child, but somebody’s child.

The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.

I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.

My grandmother was all the world to me, and the thought of being separated from her was a most unwelcome suggestion to my affections and hopes.

Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.

The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.

That the mother was a slave was enough for its deadly purpose.

Slavery had no recognition of fathers, as none of families.

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.

If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything.

I do the very best I know how--the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end.

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

He said, with a great deal of emphasis, and with an expression of countenance I shall never forget: "When a man is sincerely penitent for his misdeeds, and gives satisfactory evidence of the same, he can safely be pardoned, and there is no…

Important principles may and must be inflexible.

Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps towards it, than by running backward over them?

The question is, will it be wiser to take it as it is and help to improve it, or to reject and disperse it?

I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or even considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than with it.

As a general rule I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer.