Historical voices

I take the anti-slavery movement to be such an one, and a movement as sublime and glorious in its character, as it is holy and beneficent in the ends it aims to accomplish.

The right of speech, precious and priceless, cannot, will not, be surrendered to slavery.

Now, sir, neither the principle nor the subordinate objects here declared, can be at all gained by the slave power, and for this reason: It involves the proposition to padlock the lips of the whites, in order to secure the fetters on the…

They desire to suppress discussion on this subject, with a view to the peace of the slaveholder and the security of slavery.

If the influences against us are strong, those for us are also strong.

Yet, sir, in this seemingly desperate case, I do not despair for my people.

They do not deplore, but glory, in our misfortunes.

Evidently, this society looks upon our “extremity as its opportunity,” and we may expect that it will use the occasion well.

This fact proves that if we cannot rise to the whites, the whites can fall to us.

White men are becoming house-servants, cooks, and stewards, common laborers, and flunkeys to our gentry, and, for aught I see, they adjust themselves to their stations with all becoming obsequiousness.

Every hour sees us elbowed out of some employment to make room perhaps for some newly-arrived emigrants, whose hunger and color are thought to give them a title to especial favor.

He will find that in assuming our avocation he also has assumed our degradation.

The cruel lie is told the Irish, that our adversity is essential to their prosperity.

They are taught to believe that we eat the bread which of right belongs to them.

The Irish people, warm-hearted, generous, and sympathizing with the oppressed everywhere, when they stand upon their own green island, are instantly taught, on arriving in this Christian country, to hate and despise the colored people.

We see here the black man attacked in his vital interests; prejudice and hate are excited against him; enmity is stirred up between him and other laborers.

For, of all the places in the world where an anti-slavery man needs the confidence and encouragement of friends, I take Washington to be that place.

It coolly proposes to sell the bodies and souls of the blacks to increase the intelligence and refinement of the whites; to rob every black stranger who ventures among them, to increase their literary fund.

It would seem that the men who enacted that law, had not only banished from their minds all sense of justice, but all sense of shame.

It was intended to put thorns under feet already bleeding; to crush a people already bowed down; to enslave a people already but half free; in a word, it was intended to discourage, dishearten, and drive the free colored people out of the…

The history of that election reveals, with great clearness, the extent to which slavery has shot its leprous distillment through the life-blood of the nation.

Resting their platforms upon the fugitive slave bill, they boldly asked the people for political power to execute the horrible and hell-black provisions of that bill.

They virtually asked them to unite in a war upon free speech, and upon conscience, and to drive the Almighty presence from the councils of the nation.

Never did parties come before the northern people with propositions of such undisguised contempt for the moral sentiment and the religious ideas of that people.