#slavery

If slavery, limited as it yet is, now threatens to subvert the Constitution, how can we as wise and prudent statesmen, enlarge its boundaries and increase its influence, and thus increase already impending dangers? ↗

— William H. Seward

#boundaries #constitution #dangers #enlarge #how

It is the maintenance of slavery by law in a state, not parallels of latitude, that makes its a southern state; and the absence of this, that makes it a northern state. ↗

— William H. Seward

#latitude #law #maintenance #makes #northern

Sir, there is no Christian nation, thus free to choose as we are, which would establish slavery. ↗

— William H. Seward

#christian #christian nation #establish #free #nation

There is not only no free state which would now establish it, but there is no slave state, which, if it had had the free alternative as we now have, would have founded slavery. ↗

— William H. Seward

#establish #founded #free #free state #had

To be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#slavery #freedom

No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man. ↗

— Thomas Huxley

#double #emancipation #freedom #master #more

I have observed this in my experience of slavery, - that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceased to be a man. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#slavery #experience

Grandmother pointed out my brother Perry, my sister Sarah, and my sister Eliza, who stood in the group. I had never seen my brother nor my sisters before; and, though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters were by blood; but slavery had made us strangers. I heard the words brother and sisters, and knew they must mean something; but slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#siblings #slavery #family

The sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission. ↗

— James A. Garfield

#may #remission #said #shedding #sin

Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs. For my own people, it was important to imagine him as the Great Emancipator, the Moses who led us out of slavery. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#because #claim #closely #everyone #great