River of Dark Dreams Quotes

“But the reformers were right: the bovine digestive system is an extraordinarily efficient mechanism for converting grass, fodder, and even forage into fertilizer.15 Their shit-savings were a form of liquid capital.”
― Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom

“One man had been completely submerged in the boiling liquid which inundated the cabin, and in his removal to the deck, the skin had separated from the entire surface of his body. The unfortunate wretch was literally boiled alive, yet although his flesh parted from his bones, and his agonies were most intense, he survived and retained all his consciousness for several hours.”
― Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom

“Solomon Northup, who had been kidnapped from New York, taken to Virginia, and then sold to Louisiana, told no one his story, for fear that he “would be taken farther on, into some by-place, over the Texas border, perhaps, and sold.”
― Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom