Historical voices

The mere recurrence, even now, afflicts my spirit, and while I am writing these lines, my tears are falling.

They told a tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish.

I have sometimes thought, that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress truly spiritual-minded men and women with the soul-crushing and death-dealing character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of its mere…

In all the songs of the slaves, there was ever some expression in praise of the great house farm; something which would flatter the pride of the owner, and, possibly, draw a favorable glance from him.

In the most boisterous outbursts of rapturous sentiment, there was ever a tinge of deep melancholy.

Once on the road with an ox team, and seated on the tongue of his cart, with no overseer to look after him, the slave was comparatively free; and, if thoughtful, he had time to think.

Never went there a man to the grave loaded with heavier curses.

If the latter had been his fate, it would have been less deplorable than the living and lingering death to which cowardly and slavish souls are subjected.

He is whipped oftenest, who is whipped easiest; and that slave who has the courage to stand up for himself against the overseer, although he may have many hard stripes at the first, becomes, in the end, a freeman, even though he sustain…

The old doctrine that submission is the very best cure for outrage and wrong, does not hold good on the slave plantation.

They prefer to whip those who are most easily whipped.

He had bruised her flesh, but had left her invincible spirit undaunted.

It is often deemed advisable to knock a man slave down, in order to tie him, but it is considered cowardly and inexcusable, in an overseer, thus to deal with a woman.

The overseer never was allowed to whip Harry; why then should he be allowed to whip Harry’s wife?

But, whatever it is, or is not, if it gets the name of “impudence,” the party charged with it is sure of a flogging.

The offense alleged against Nelly, was one of the commonest and most indefinite in the whole catalogue of offenses usually laid to the charge of slaves, viz: “impudence.” This may mean almost anything, or nothing at all, just according to…

This cheering assurance was an inborn dream of my human nature a constant menace to slavery—and one which all the powers of slavery were unable to silence or extinguish.

It was with me in the woods and fields; along the shore of the river, and wherever my boyish wanderings led me; and though I was, at that time, quite ignorant of the existence of the free states, I distinctly remember being, even then…

It was not color, but crime, not God, but man, that afforded the true explanation of the existence of slavery; nor was I long in finding out another important truth, viz: what man can make, man can unmake.

Color, therefore, was a very unsatisfactory basis for slavery.

I knew of blacks who were not slaves; I knew of whites who were not slaveholders; and I knew of persons who were nearly white, who were slaves.

Did they go up in the sky and learn it? or, did He come down and tell them so?

Besides, how did people know that God made black people to be slaves?

It was not good to let old master cut the flesh off Esther, and make her cry so.