Slavery can only be abolished by raising the character of the people who compose the nation; and that can be done only by showing ...them a higher one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Slavery is no more sinful, by the Christian code, than it is sinful to wear a whole coat, while another is in tatters, to eat a be...tter meal than a neighbor, or otherwise to enjoy ease and plenty, while our fellow creatures are suffering and in want.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... if you're poor and ignorant, with a child, you're a slave. Meaning that you're never going to get out of it. These women are i...n bondage to a kind of slavery that the 13th Amendment just didn't deal with. The old master provided food, clothing and health care to the slaves because he wanted them to get up and go to work in the morning. And so on welfare: you get food, clothing and shelter--you get survival, but you can't really do anything else. You can't control your life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... no one who has not been an integral part of a slaveholding community, can have any idea of its abominations.... even were slav...ery no curse to its victims, the exercise of arbitrary power works such fearful ruin upon the hearts of slaveholders, that I should feel impelled to labor and pray for its overthrow with my last energies and latest breath.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Woman--with a capital letter--should by now have ceased to be a specialty. There should be no more need of "movements" on her beha...lf, and agitations for her advancement and development ... than for the abolition of negro slavery in the United States.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of... it, by being a slave himself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But, slavery is good for some people! ! ! As a good thing, slavery is strikingly peculiar, in this, that it is the only good thing... which no man ever seeks the good of, for himself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging t...o the master--so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil--so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best-regulated administration of slavery.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does no...t lick, and make fouler still with its slime?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I lately attended a meeting of the citizens of Concord, expecting, as one among many, to speak on the subject of slavery in Massac...husetts; but I was surprised and disappointed to find that what had called my townsmen together was the destiny of Nebraska, and not of Massachusetts, and that what I had to say would be entirely out of order. I had thought that the house was on fire, and not the prairie; but though several of the citizens of Massachusetts are now in prison for attempting to rescue a slave from her own clutches, not one of the speakers at that meeting expressed regret for it, not one even referred to it. It was only the disposition of some wild lands a thousand miles off which appeared to concern them. The inhabitants of Concord are not prepared to stand by one of their own bridges, but talk only of taking up a position on the highlands beyond the Yellowstone River. Our Buttricks and Davises and Hosmers are retreating thither, and I fear that they will leave no Lexington Common between them and the enemy. There is not one slave in Nebraska; there are perhaps a million slaves in Massachusetts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »