More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I’m a humane man, and I hate to take the boy from his mother, sir.”
These critters ain’t like white folks, you know; they gets over things, only manage right.
humanity comes out in a variety of strange forms now-a-days, and there is no end to the odd things that humane people will say and do.
Niggers, you know, that’s fetched up properly, ha’n’t no kind of ’spectations of no kind; so all these things comes easier.”
It’s a free country, sir; the man’s mine, and I do what I please with him,—that’s it!”
I’m a poor, miserable, forlorn drudge; I shall only drag you down with me, that’s all.
What’s the use of living? I wish I was dead!”
“My master! and who made him my master? That’s what I think of—what right has he to me? I’m a man as much as he is. I’m a better man than he is. I know more about business than he does; I am a better manager than he is; I can read better than he can; I can write a better hand,—and I’ve learned it all myself, and no thanks to him,—I’ve learned it in spite of him; and now what right has he to make a dray-horse of me?—to
“I always thought that I must obey my master and mistress, or I couldn’t be a Christian.”
“Don’t you know a slave can’t be married? There is no law in this country for that; I can’t hold you for my wife, if he chooses to part us.
“This is God’s curse on slavery!—a bitter, bitter, most accursed thing!—a curse to the master and a curse to the slave!
It is a sin to hold a slave under laws like ours,—I
“when it’s jest takin’ the very life on ’em?—and
“Obeying God never brings on public evils. I know it can’t. It’s always safest, all round, to do as He bids us.
O, ye who visit the distressed, do ye know that everything your money can buy, given with a cold, averted face, is not worth one honest tear shed in real sympathy?
Mr. Wilson, you have a country; but what country have I, or any one like me, born of slave mothers? What laws are there for us? We don’t make them,—we don’t consent to them,—we have nothing to do with them; all they do for us is to crush us, and keep us down.
“It’s undoubtedly the intention of Providence that the African race should be servants,—kept in a low condition,”
They are a degraded race.”
“I’m thankful I’m born where slavery exists; and I believe it’s right,—indeed, I feel it must be; and, at any rate, I’m sure I couldn’t get along without it.”
“Is God on their side?”
“Does he see all they do? Why does he let such things happen? And they tell us that the Bible is on their side; certainly all the power is. They are rich, and healthy, and happy; they are members of churches, expecting to go to heaven; and they get along so easy in the world, and have it all their own way; and poor, honest, faithful Christians,—Christians as good or better than they,—are lying in the very dust under their feet. They buy ’em and sell ’em, and make trade of their heart’s blood, and groans and tears,—and God lets them.”
There is something in boldness and determination that for a time hushes even the rudest nature.
“Don’t want none o’ your light-colored balls,” said Dinah; “cuttin’ round, makin’ b’lieve you’s white folks. Arter all, you’s niggers, much as I am.”
“I looks like gwine to heaven,” said the woman; “an’t thar where white folks is gwine? S’pose they’d have me thar?
We might as well allow the small-pox to run among them, and think our children would not take it, as to let them be uninstructed and vicious, and think our children will not be affected by that.
just begin and thoroughly educate one generation, and the whole thing would be blown sky high. If we did not give them liberty, they would take it.”
No! the ear that has never heard anything but abuse is strangely incredulous of anything so heavenly as kindness;
“It’s a pity, wife, that you have burdened them with a morality above their condition and prospects.
One man can do nothing, against the whole action of a community. Education, to do anything, must be a state education; or there must be enough agreed in it to make a current.”
What is it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly, so clearly, that its earthly time is short? Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature, or the soul’s impulsive throb, as immortality draws on?
There is a kind of beauty so intense, yet so fragile, that we cannot bear to look at it.
“I am braver than I was, because I have lost all; and he who has nothing to lose can afford all risks.”
Keep a negro under the care of a master, and he does well enough, and is respectable; but set them free, and they get lazy, and won’t work, and take to drinking, and go all down to be mean, worthless fellows, I’ve seen it tried, hundreds of times. It’s no favor to set them free.”
The dealers in the human article make scrupulous and systematic efforts to promote noisy mirth among them, as a means of drowning reflection, and rendering them insensible to their condition.
The slave is always a tyrant, if he can get a chance to be one.
When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at which endurance is possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage.
“It is with the oppressed, enslaved African race that I cast in my lot; and, if I wished anything, I would wish myself two shades darker, rather than one lighter.
To fill up Liberia with an ignorant, inexperienced, half-barbarized race, just escaped from the chains of slavery, would be only to prolong, for ages, the period of struggle and conflict which attends the inception of new enterprises.
