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.
Being black during slavery had to be some ordeal. You can have a wife but she is not yours, childen but they are not yours. At any moment you are either of them can be sold and you have no say in the matter. No matter how kind one may think those that own them, they are property, subject to their will. George had came to this disturbing truth.
