Historical voices

It will be seen in these pages that I have lived several lives in one.

My part has been to tell the story of the slave.

The time is at hand when the last American slave, and the last American slaveholder will disappear behind the curtain which separates the living from the dead, and when neither master nor slave will be left to tell the story of their…

My joys have far exceeded my sorrows, and my friends have brought me far more than my enemies have taken from me.

The most of the space of life is behind me, and the sun of my day is nearing the horizon.

I remarked to him, that no part of the American people would be treated with respect, if systematically ignored by the government, and denied all participation in its honors and emoluments.

Our relation to the American people makes us in some sense a peculiar class, and unless we speak separately, our voice is not heard.

We are here, not merely as American citizens, but as colored American citizens.

What are the shouts of the multitude, the pride and pomp of this world?

The light of no day in our national history has brought to the American people a more intense bereavement, a deeper sorrow, or a more profound sense of humiliation.

In a word, I have never yet been able to find one consideration, one argument, or suggestion in favor of man’s right to participate in civil government which did not equally apply to the right of woman.

I would give woman a vote, give her a motive to qualify herself to vote, precisely as I insisted upon giving the colored man the right to vote, in order that he should have the same motives for making himself a useful citizen as those in…

If from the cradle through life the outside world brands a class as unfit for this or that work, the character of the class will come to resemble and conform to the character described.

I believed that the exclusion of my race from participation in government was not only a wrong, but a great mistake, because it took from that race motives for high thought and endeavor, and degraded them in the eyes of the world around…

At any rate, seeing that the male governments of the world have failed, it can do no harm to try the experiment of a government by man and woman united.

The slayers of thousands have been exalted into heroes, and the worship of mere physical force has been considered glorious.

War, slavery, injustice, and oppression, and the idea that might makes right, have been uppermost in all such governments; and the weak, for whose protection governments are ostensibly created, have had practically no rights which the…

Thus far all human governments have been failures, for none have secured, except in a partial degree, the ends for which governments are instituted.

In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power for the…

Though this folly may be less apparent, it is just as real, when one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the world is excluded from any voice or vote in civil government.

We should all see the folly and madness of attempting to accomplish with a part what could only be done with the united strength of the whole.

If intelligence is the only true and rational basis of government, it follows that that is the best government which draws its life and power from the largest sources of wisdom, energy, and goodness at its command.

Observing woman’s agency, devotion, and efficiency in pleading the cause of the slave, gratitude for this high service early moved me to give favorable attention to the subject of what is called “Woman’s Rights,” and caused me to be…

More than to reason or religion are we indebted to the influence which this wonderful delineation of American chattel slavery produced on the public mind.