I was most keenly sensitive to know any and everything possible that had any relation to the subject of slavery. I was all ears, all eyes, whenever the words slave or slavery dropped from the lips of any white person, and more and more frequently occasions occurred when these words came leading ones in high, social debate at our house.
They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves. It was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man’s slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!
You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?
You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free!
Driven intosemi-exile by civil and barbarous laws, and by a system which cannot be thought of without a shudder, I was fullyjustified in turning, if possible, the tide of the moral universeagainst the heaven-daring outrage.
Why am I a slave?
I say, this picture sometimes appalled us, and made us rather bear those ills we had. Than fly to others, that we knew not of.
In studying the character and works of a great man, it is always desirable to learn in what he is distinguished from others, and what have been the causes if this difference.
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace.
Another advantage I gained in my new master was, he made no pretensions to, or profession of, religion; and this, in my opinion, was truly a great advantage.
No one idea has given rise to more oppression and persecution toward colored people of this country than that which makes Africa, not America, their home.
I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any God? Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught, or get clear, I’ll try it. I had as well die with ague as the fever, I have only one life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die standing. Only think of it; one hundred miles straight north, and I am free! Try it? Yes! God helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave.
H. H. GARNET. We need a thousand such representative.
The same traits of character might be seen in Colonel Lloyd’s slaves, as are seen in the slaves of the political parties.
To be accused was to be convicted, and to be convicted was to be punished; the one always following the other with immutable certainty.
No man whose vision is bounded by colour can come into contact with what is highest and best in the world.
Of all of the other twenty-seven black autobiographies published before 1846, only six went through four or more editions during the nineteenth century and only three of these were translated into foreign languages.
Give me the making of a nation’s ballads and I care not who has the making of its Laws.
What he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn.
They were great in their day and generation.