American Slavery Quotes

On this page you will find all the quotes on the topic "American Slavery". There are currently 39 quotes in our collection about American Slavery. Discover the TOP 10 sayings about American Slavery!
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  • The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

    Abraham Lincoln (2008). “Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln(1832-1865) (EasyRead Super Large 20pt Edition)”, p.74, ReadHowYouWant.com
  • A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.

    Speech at Republican state convention nominating him to run for U.S. senator, Springfield, Ill., 16 June 1858
  • American slavery was not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will honor them.

    Twitter post from Dec 22, 2012
  • I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free.

    Freedom   Men   Wish  
    Letter to Horace Greeley, 22 August 1862
  • The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty

    Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Md., 18 Apr. 1864
  • So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for 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.

    Selfish   Mistake   Men  
    "Fragment on Slavery" ca. 1 July 1854
  • I think then I may safely conclude and I firmly believe that American slavery is not only not a sin but especially commanded by God through Moses and approved by Christ through His Apostles.

    David Christy, Albert Taylor Bledsoe, William Harper, Thornton Stringfellow, James Henry Hammond (1860). “Cotton is king”, p.636
  • A house divided against itself cannot stand.

    Speech at Republican state convention nominating him to run for U.S. senator, Springfield, Ill., 16 June 1858
  • Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

    Change   Freedom   Father  
    Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pa., 19 Nov. 1863
  • In every man's mind the good seeds of liberty are planted, and he who brings his fellow down so low, as to make him contented with a condition of slavery, commits the highest crime against God and man. Brethren, your oppressors aim to do this. They endeavor to make you as much like brutes as possible. When they have blinded the eyes of your mind-when they have embittered the sweet waters of the light which shines from the word of God-then, and not till then has American slavery done its perfect work.

    Sweet   Eye   Men  
    Henry Highland Garnet (1865). “A Memorial Discourse”, p.47, Gale Cengage Learning
  • One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.

    Powerful   War   Southern  
    Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1865
  • What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle - the sheet anchor of American republicanism.

    Speech, Peoria, Ill., 16 Oct. 1854
  • It is said that the Negro is ignorant. But why is he ignorant? It comes with ill grace from a man who has put out my eyes to makea parade of my blindness,--to reproach me for my poverty when he has wronged me of my money.... If he is poor, what has become of the money he has been earning for the last two hundred and fifty years? Years ago it was said cotton fights and cotton conquers for American slavery. The Negro helped build up that great cotton power in the South, and in the North his sigh was in the whir of its machinery, and his blood and tears upon the warp and woof of its manufactures.

    Eye   Fighting   Men  
  • If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

    Letter to Albert G. Hodges, 4 Apr. 1864
  • The tobacco business is a conspiracy against womanhood and manhood. It owes its origin to that scoundrel Sir Walter Raleigh, who was likewise the founder of American slavery.

  • If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.

    Letter to Horace Greeley, 22 Aug. 1862
  • If any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others

    Desire   Firsts   Slave  
    Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.343, Fordham Univ Press
  • I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

    Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.250, Wildside Press LLC
  • Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope.

    Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.160, Fordham Univ Press
  • The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

    Mean   People   Civil War  
    Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Md., 18 Apr. 1864
  • Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.

    War   Party   Duration  
    Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1865
  • Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

    God   Civil War   Unity  
    Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1865
  • The Almighty has His own purposes.

    God   Civil War   Purpose  
    Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1865
  • My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

    War   Believe   Struggle  
    Letter to Horace Greeley, 22 Aug. 1862
  • I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.

    Letter to Albert G. Hodges, 4 Apr. 1864
  • The greatest evil of American slavery was not involuntary servitude but rather the narrative of racial differences we created to legitimate slavery. Because we never dealt with that evil, I don't think slavery ended in 1865, it just evolved.

    Source: www.progressive.org
  • We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

    Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Md., 18 Apr. 1864
  • I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

    Speech at Republican state convention nominating him to run for U.S. senator, Springfield, Ill., 16 June 1858
  • I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be 'the Union as it was'.

    War   Unions   Way  
    Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.388, Wildside Press LLC
  • The truth is that History, with its imposing capital H, is simply the amalgamation of many quotidian lives lived in very ordinary ways. History is always personal. If you read Holocaust survivor or American slavery survivor narratives, you realize all too well that these great Historical moments were personal to someone at some time.

    "The Rumpus Interview With Chris Abani". Interview with Peter Orner, therumpus.net. February 10, 2014.
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