Historical voices

I do oppose the extension of slavery, because my judgment and feeling so prompt me, and I am under no obligations to the contrary.

You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union.

It is not fair for you to assume that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable.

I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down and caught and carried back to their stripes and unrequited toil; but I bite my lips and keep quiet.

Our political problem now is, "Can we as a nation continue together permanently--for ever--half slave, and half free?" The problem is too mighty for me.

The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown and proclaim his subjects free republicans, sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

So far as peaceful, voluntary emancipation is concerned, the condition of the negro slave in America, scarcely less terrible to the contemplation of the free mind, is now as fixed and hopeless of change for the better as that of the lost…

Under the impulse of that occasion, nearly half the States adopted systems of emancipation at once; and it is a significant fact that not a single State has done the like since.

That spirit which desired the peaceful extinction of slavery has itself become extinct with the occasion and the men of the Revolution.

On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been.

Old as the everlasting hills; immovable as the throne of God; and certain as the purposes of eternal power, against all hinderances, and against all delays, and despite all the mutations of human instrumentalities, it is the faith of my…

Its foundations are laid in the deepest and holiest convictions, and from whatever soul the demon, selfishness, is expelled, there will this cause take up its abode.

Such is the voice of experience, such has been the past, such is the present, and such will be that future, which, so sure as man is man, will come.

Give, give, will be its cry, till the timidity which concedes shall give place to courage, which shall resist.

The heart of pity, which would melt in due time over the brutal chastisements it sees inflicted on the helpless, must be hardened.

Every new-born white babe comes armed from the Eternal presence, to make war on slavery.

To be a slave-holder is to be a propagandist from necessity; for slavery can only live by keeping down the under-growth morality which nature supplies.

The slave-holder is not satisfied to associate with men in the church or in the state, unless he can thereby stain them with the blood of his slaves.

It is the nature of slavery to beget a state of things all around it favorable to its own continuance.

There is another element of power added to the anti-slavery movement, of great importance; it is the conviction, becoming every day more general and universal, that slavery must be abolished at the south, or it will demoralize and destroy…

For men are always disposed to respect and defend rights, when the victims of oppression stand up manfully for themselves.

It has called into exercise among the colored people, the hunted ones, a spirit of manly resistance well calculated to surround them with a bulwark of sympathy and respect hitherto unknown.

It has revealed the arrogant and overbearing spirit of the slave states toward the free states; despising their principles—shocking their feelings of humanity, not only by bringing before them the abominations of slavery, but by attempting…

It has illustrated before all the people the horrible character of slavery toward the slave, in hunting him down in a free state, and tearing him away from wife and children, thus setting its claims higher than marriage or parental claims.