Historical voices

It did produce sensation, but not enough to bring the murderess to punishment.

I speak advisedly when I say this,—that killing a slave, or any colored person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by the courts or the community.

He spoke but to command, and commanded but to be obeyed; he dealt sparingly with his words, and bountifully with his whip, never using the former where the latter would answer as well.

To be accused was to be convicted, and to be convicted was to be punished; the one always following the other with immutable certainty.

It was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man’s slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!

Indeed, it is not uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quarrel among themselves about the relative goodness of their masters, each contending for the superior goodness of his own over that of the others.

Many, under the influence of this prejudice, think their own masters are better than the masters of other slaves; and this, too, in some cases, when the very reverse is true.

They suppress the truth rather than take the consequences of telling it, and in so doing prove themselves a part of the human family.

The slaveholders have been known to send in spies among their slaves, to ascertain their views and feelings in regard to their condition.

It is partly in consequence of such facts, that slaves, when inquired of as to their condition and the character of their masters, almost universally say they are contented, and that their masters are kind.

This is the penalty of telling the truth, of telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain questions.

He was immediately chained and handcuffed; and thus, without a moment’s warning, he was snatched away, and forever sundered, from his family and friends, by a hand more unrelenting than death.

The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.

Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery.

I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness.

The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.

I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness.

Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds.

To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery.

Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed 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 some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do.

They would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone.

While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness.