Historical voices

From that time, I resolved that I would some day run away.

I was not satisfied with this theory, which made God responsible for slavery, for it pained me greatly, and I have wept over it long and often.

When I saw the slave-driver whip a slave-woman, cut the blood out of her neck, and heard her piteous cries, I went away into the corner of the fence, wept and pondered over the mystery.

The very first mental effort that I now remember on my part, was an attempt to solve the mystery—why am I a slave? and with this question my youthful mind was troubled for many days, pressing upon me more heavily at times than others.

I embraced the golden opportunity, took the morning tide at the flood, and a free man, young, active, and strong, is the result.

Trying, however, as they were, and gloomy as was the prospect, thanks be to the Most High, who is ever the God of the oppressed, at the moment which was to determine my whole earthly career, His grace was sufficient; my mind was made up.

I was like one going to war without weapons—ten chances of defeat to one of victory.

The hopes which I had treasured up for weeks of a safe and successful escape from your grasp, were powerfully confronted at this last hour by dark clouds of doubt and fear, making my person shake and my bosom to heave with the heavy…

Just ten years ago this beautiful September morning, yon bright sun beheld me a slave—a poor degraded chattel—trembling at the sound of your voice, lamenting that I was a man, and wishing myself a brute.

All will agree that a man guilty of theft, robbery, or murder, has forfeited the right to concealment and private life; that the community have a right to subject such persons to the most complete exposure.

There are those north as well as south who entertain a much higher respect for rights which are merely conventional, than they do for rights which are personal and essential.

I would have condemnation blaze down upon him in every direction, till, stunned and overwhelmed with shame and confusion, he is compelled to let go the grasp he holds upon the persons of his victims, and restore them to their long-lost…

I want him to feel that he has no sympathy in England, Scotland, or Ireland; that he has none in Canada, none in Mexico, none among the poor wild Indians; that the voice of the civilized, aye, and savage world is against him.

I want the slaveholder surrounded, as by a wall of anti-slavery fire, so that he may see the condemnation of himself and his system glaring down in letters of light.

To tear off the mask from this abominable system, to expose it to the light of heaven, aye, to the heat of the sun, that it may burn and wither it out of existence, is my object in coming to this country.

Slavery shrinks from the light; it hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be reproved.

They want the hatchway shut down, that the monster may crawl in his den of darkness, crushing human hopes and happiness, destroying the bondman at will, and having no one to reprove or rebuke him.

The slaveholders want total darkness on the subject.

Light is to slavery what the heat of the sun is to the root of a tree; it must die under it.

Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.

I expose slavery in this country, because to expose it is to kill it.

I feel it my duty to cry aloud and spare not.

I have on my back the marks of the lash; I have four sisters and one brother now under the galling chain.

The slaveholders would much rather have me, if I will denounce slavery, denounce it in the northern states, where their friends and supporters are, who will stand by and mob me for denouncing it.