Truth is proper and beautiful in all times and in all places.
The relation between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve.
Intelligence is a great leveler here as elsewhere.
In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny.
No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty.
Abolition of slavery had been the deepest desire and the great labor of my life.
A war undertaken and brazenly carried for the perpetual enslavement of the colored men, calls logically and loudly for the colored men to help suppress it.
Heaven’s blessing must attend all, and freedom must soon be given to the pining millions under a ruthless bondage.
Some know the value of education by having it. I know it’s value by not having it.
The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing.
Slaves were expected to sing as well as to work. A silent slave was not liked, either by masters or overseers.
Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. Show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person and I will show you the exact amount of words endured by these people.
Our destiny is largely in our hands.
The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past was troubling. I longed for a future too, with hope in it. The desire to be free, awakened my determination to act, to think, and to SPEAK.
It is better to be part of a great whole than to be the whole of a small part.
Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.
There are at present many Coloured men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and labourers, but real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets.
The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.
I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of increasing my contentment; it only increased my desire to be free, and set me thinking of plans to gain my freedom.
Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum.