Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes
-
Notwithstanding my grandmother's long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.
→ -
Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous creatures as little as I do the other.
→ -
Dr. Flint had sworn that he would make me suffer, to my last day, for this new crime against him, as he called it; and as long as he had me in his power he kept his word
→ -
Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows
→ -
Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.
→ -
Death is better than slavery.
→ -
The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.
→ -
I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters.
→ -
No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.
→ -
The war of my life had begun; and though one of God's most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered.
→ -
For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood
→ -
There are wrongs which even the grave does not bury.
→ -
Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.
→ -
If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year.
→ -
There must be sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible.
→ -
Could you have seen that mother clinging to her child, when they fastened the irons upon his wrists; could you have heard her heart-rending groans, and seen her bloodshot eyes wander wildly from face to face, vainly pleading for mercy; could you have witnessed that scene as I saw it, you would exclaim, Slavery is damnable!
→ -
If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.
→ -
When I was six years old, my mother died; and then, for the first time, I learned, by the talk around me, that I was a slave.
→ -
There are no bonds so strong as those which are formed by suffering together
→ -
There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment.
→ -
The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe.
→ -
I would rather drudge out my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress.
→ -
There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious.
→ -
I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.
→ -
The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition.
→ -
The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear.
→ -
DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family, I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress
→ -
When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.
→ -
I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away
→ -
When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.
→