Historical voices

It was the nature of slavery from whose depths he had arisen to make him so, and it would have kept it so.

It would have been rewarding its enemies, and punishing its friends--embracing its foes, and spurning its allies,--setting a premium on treason, and degrading loyalty.

The very fact therefore that the old master-classes of the South felt that their interests were opposed to those of the freedmen, instead of being a reason against their enfranchisement, was the most powerful one in its favor.

It would have been, to have committed the lamb to the care of the wolf--the arming of one class and disarming the other--protecting one interest, and destroying the other--making the rich strong, and the poor weak--the white man a tyrant…

These reasons against the measure which were supposed to be unanswerable, were in some sense the most powerful arguments in its favor.

A man’s head will not long remain wrong, when his heart is right.

The demand for the ballot was such a vast advance upon the former objects proclaimed by the friends of the colored race, that it startled and struck men as preposterous and wholly inadmissible.

From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the freedman, until he should cease to be merely a freedman, and should become a citizen.

I, therefore, soon found that the negro had still a cause, and that he needed my voice and pen with others to plead for it.

He had nothing left him but a slavery-distorted and diseased body, and lame and twisted limbs with which to fight the battle of life.

Now, since poverty has, and can have no chance against wealth, the landless against the land owner, the ignorant against the intelligent, the freedman was powerless.

The thought of paying cash for labor that they could formerly extort by the lash did not in anywise improve their disposition to the emancipated slave, or improve his own condition.

He was in a word literally turned loose naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky.

He was free from the individual master, but the slave of society.

I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class.

The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only where there is power to make that law respected.

No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling, and action of others; and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending, and maintaining that liberty.

Though they were not slaves they were not yet quite free.

Though slavery was abolished, the wrongs of my people were not ended.

I never rise to speak before an American audience without something of the feeling that my failure or success will bring blame or benefit to my whole race.

I found that the success of a lecturer depends more upon the quality of his stock in store, than the amount.

It proved, as to its immediate effect, a great mistake, for my carefully studied and written address, full of learned quotations, fell dead at my feet, while a few remarks I made extemporaneously at collation, were enthusiastically…

I had after all acquired (a very unusual thing) a little more knowledge and aptitude fitting me for the new condition of things than I knew, and had a deeper hold upon public attention than I had supposed.

A man in the situation I found myself, has not only to divest himself of the old, which is never easily done, but to adjust himself to the new, which is still more difficult.