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41 " At the south, a gentleman can have a shoal of colored children without any disgrace, but if he is known to purchase them, with the view of setting them free, the example is thought to be dangerous to their "peculiar institution," and he becomes unpopular. "
― Harriet Ann Jacobs , Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
42 " When the mother was delivered into the trader's hands, she said, "You promised to treat me well." To which he replied, "You have let your tongue run too far; damn you!" She had forgotten that it was a crime to tell who was the father of her child. "
43 " 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. "
44 " Reader, did you ever hate? I hope not. I never did but once; and I trust I never shall again. Somebody has called it "the atmosphere of hell"; and I believe it is so. "
45 " God judges men by their hearts, not by the color of their skins. "
46 " My Master had power and law on his side; I had a determined will. There is might in each. "
47 " Would that I had more ability! But my heart is so full, and my pen is so weak! "
48 " There are wrongs which even the grave does not bury. "
49 " Why allow the tendrils of the heart to twine around objects which may at any moment be wrenched away "
50 " 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 white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. "
51 " No, I did not think of him. When a man is hunted like a wild beast he forgets there is a God, a heaven. He forgets every thing in his struggle to get beyond the reach of the bloodhounds. "
52 " Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities. "
53 " He grew vexed and asked if poverty and hardships with freedom, were not preferable to our treatment in slavery...No, I will not stay. Let them bring me back. We don't die but once. "
54 " She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother's instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies. "
55 " There are no bonds so strong as those which are formed by suffering together. "
56 " Satan's church is here below; Up to God's free church I hope to go. "
57 " the scripture says "oppression makes it even a wise man mad"... "
58 " I forgot that in the land of my birth the shadows are too dense for light to penetrate. "
59 " Yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system. Their talk is of blighted cotton crops--not of the blight on their children's souls. "
60 " Women are considered of no value, unless they continually increase their owner's stock. They are put on a par with animals. This same master shot a woman through the head, who had run away and been brought back to him. No one called him to account for it. If a slave resisted being whipped, the bloodhounds were unpacked, and set upon him, to tear his flesh from his bones. The master who did these things was highly educated, and styled a perfect gentleman. He also boasted the name and standing of a Christian, though Satan never had a truer follower. I "