quotations about slavery
Of course, most white Southerners of the period were neither villains nor heroes. The majority did not enslave other people, but neither did they advocate the end of slavery or even the softening of slavery. They did not work to halt the worst practices of the era -- the sale of children away from parents, the separation of husbands and wives -- nor did they seek to end the concubinage of enslaved girls and women. Many did not own slaves simply because they couldn't afford them.
LISA RICHARDSON
"A daughter of the Confederacy corrects history", Gulf Times, August 29, 2017
In ancient times, as to-day in Asia and Africa, slaves were simply called slaves. In the Middle Ages, they took the name of "serfs", to-day they are called "wage-earners".
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
Marxism, Freedom and the State
It is the mind of man alone that is the cause of his bondage or freedom.
CHANAKYA
Vridda-Chanakya
I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have staid in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master's eye. ... And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.
CHARLES DARWIN
The Voyage of the Beagle
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
PATRICK HENRY
Speech at the Second Virginia Convention at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775
Gluttonized foundation
Well versed in the art of slavery
Patrons of feudal interest
Scurry around a concrete beehive
Crazed civilization frantically going nowhere
DISCORDANCE AXIS
"Empire"
Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.
ANNA QUINDLEN
New York Times, January 31, 1993
A slave is but half a man.
ARISTOPHANES
attributed, Day's Collacon
The turpitude, the inhumanity, the cruelty, and the infamy of the African commerce in slaves have been so impressively represented to the public by the highest powers of eloquence that nothing that I can say would increase the just odium in which it is and ought to be held. Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to T. Robert J. Evans, June 8, 1819
It was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man's slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
It seemed to me much more than the mere question whether the negro should remain in slavery; that it really involved the question whether liberty should be strangled on the continent dedicated to liberty.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
When you believe, or are led to believe, you are unable to act upon the greatest desires of the soul, the result is mental and spiritual enslavement.
IYANLA VANZANT
Acts of Faith
X is not my real name, but if you study history you'll find why no black man in the western hemisphere knows his real name. Some of his ancestors kidnapped our ancestors from Africa, and took us into the western hemisphere and sold us there. And our names were stripped from us and so today we don't know who we really are. I am one of those who admit it and so I just put X up there to keep from wearing his name.
MALCOLM X
Oxford Union Debate, December 3, 1964
Hence many slaves could escape by personating the owner of one set of papers; and this was often done as follows: A slave, nearly or sufficiently answering the description set forth in the papers, would borrow or hire them till by means of them he could escape to a free State, and then, by mail or otherwise, would return them to the owner. The operation was a hazardous one for the lender as well as for the borrower. A failure on the part of the fugitive to send back the papers would imperil his benefactor, and the discovery of the papers in possession of the wrong man would imperil both the fugitive and his friend. It was, therefore, an act of supreme trust on the part of a freeman of color thus to put in jeopardy his own liberty that another might be free. It was, however, not unfrequently bravely done, and was seldom discovered.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
"My Escape from Slavery", The Century Illustrated Magazine, November 1881
Ye men of sense and virtue -- Ye advocates for American liberty, rouse up and espouse the cause of humanity and general liberty. Bear a testimony against a vice which degrades human nature, and dissolves that universal tie of benevolence which should connect all the children of men together in one great family -- The plant of liberty is of so tender a nature, that it cannot thrive long in the neighbourhood of slavery.
BENJAMIN RUSH
"On Slavekeeping", 1773
I never mean, unless some particular circumstance should compel me to it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to John Francis Mercer, September 9, 1786
Slavery is bad for the slave, but far worse for the master, as sapping his character and making impossible that moral vigour of the individual on which is based the collective vigour of the nation.
LEONARD HUXLEY
"Life of Professor Huxley", Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley
Jaws of greed shine of green salivate
Force feed until gums bleed in slavery
Bottled trapped lifeless meat
Are you the leasher or the one being leashed?
HIS HERO IS GONE
"Leash"
Do you, do you remember those days of slavery?
It wasn't black man alone, who died thru bravery.
'Though some a dem threw dem self over board,
because dis ya slaveship overload.
EEK-A-MOUSE
"Do You Remember"
The man born and bred a slave, even if freed, never loses wholly the feeling or manner of a slave.
MARY CLEMMER AMES
Outlines of Men, Women, and Things