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Founders, statesmen and world leaders — cited from their collected works.
The figures
I now find that I could have landed in no part of the United States, where I should have found a more striking and gratifying contrast to the condition of the free people of color in Baltimore, than I found here in New Bedford.
On the wharves, I saw industry without bustle, labor without noise, and heavy toil without the whip.
The explanation was soon furnished, in the superiority of mind over simple brute force.
Judge, then, of my amazement and joy, when I found—as I did find—the very laboring population of New Bedford living in better houses, more elegantly furnished—surrounded by more comfort and refinement—than a majority of the slaveholders on…
Among honest men an honest man may well be content with one name, and to acknowledge it at all times and in all places; but toward fugitives, Americans are not honest.
I kept my secret as long as I could, and at last was forced to go in search of an honest man—a man sufficiently human not to betray me into the hands of slave-catchers.
I was not only free from slavery, but I was free from home, as well.
A man, homeless, shelterless, breadless, friendless, and moneyless, is not in a condition to assume a very proud or joyous tone; and in just this condition was I, while wandering about the streets of New York city and lodging, at least one…
The master is to him a stern and flinty reality, but the state is little more than a dream.
The slave has been all his life learning the power of his master—being trained to dread his approach—and only a few hours learning the power of the state.
A freeman cannot understand why the slave-master’s shadow is bigger, to the slave, than the might and majesty of a free state; but when he reflects that the slave knows more about the slavery of his master than he does of the might and…
Why do you tremble,” he says to the slave “you are in a free state;” but the difficulty is, in realizing that he is in a free state, the slave might reply.
He cannot see things in the same light with the slave, because he does not, and cannot, look from the same point from which the slave does.
It is difficult for a freeman to enter into the feelings of such fugitives.
Some apology can easily be made for the few slaves who have, after making good their escape, turned back to slavery, preferring the actual rule of their masters, to the life of loneliness, apprehension, hunger, and anxiety, which meets…
I was without home, without friends, without work, without money, and without any definite knowledge of which way to go, or where to look for succor.
In the midst of human brothers, and yet more fearful of them than of hungry wolves!
In the midst of thousands of my fellowmen, and yet a perfect stranger!
A sense of my loneliness and helplessness crept over me, and covered me with something bordering on despair.
It was like the quick blaze, beautiful at the first, but which subsiding, leaves the building charred and desolate.
I was A FREEMAN, and the voice of peace and joy thrilled my heart.
The contest was now ended; the chain was severed; God and right stood vindicated.
A contest had been going on in my mind for years, between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible errors of superstition; between the wisdom of manly courage, and the foolish weakness of timidity.
Baffled and discouraged at times, I had asked myself the question, May not this, after all, be God’s work?
