19th-century Abolitionist Quotes

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Tubman

John Brown (abolitionist)

Sojourner Truth

Elizabeth Blackwell

Julia Ward Howe

Charles Sumner

I felt more than ever the necessity of my mission. But I went home out of spirits, I hardly know why. I must work by myself all life long.

Elizabeth Blackwell

Complexion can in no sense be construed into crime, much less be rightfully made the criterion of rights.

Charles Lenox Remond

Nations which are pleased to term themselves civilized, have one sort of faith which they hold to one another, and another sort which they entertain towards people less advanced in refinement. The faith which they entertain towards the latter, is very often treachery, in the vocabulary of the civilized.

James McCune Smith

Slaves, of any color, becoming free in countries where their own race are in bondage, show as much if not more eagerness (when they possess the means) to become masters, than such as are born free. And their treatment of their slaves is generally more cruel.

Theodore S. Wright

Certainly, great injustice is done to a people who are excluded on account of a complexion which they did not give themselves.

J. Sella Martin

Self-reliance Is the Fine Road to Independence.

To be compelled to stand by and see you whip and slash my wife without mercy, when I could afford her no protection, not even by offering myself to suffer the lash in her place, was more than I felt it to be the duty of a slave husband to endure.

You tell those newspaper people that they may be smart, but I'm smarter. They deal with words. Some folks say that words were made to reveal thoughts. That ain't so. Words were made to conceal thought.

Mary Ellen Pleasant

Every man knows that slavery is a curse. Whoever denies this, his lips libel his heart.

Theodore Dwight Weld

It has been suggested that an account of my life and fortunes would not be uninteresting to the public,

Solomon Northup

The most stupendous system of organized robbery known has been that of the church towards woman, a robbery that has not only taken her self-respect but all rights of person; the fruits of her own industry; her opportunities of education; the exercise of her judgment, her own conscience, her own will.

Matilda Joslyn Gage

When this boy was brought to Dr. Young, his name being William, the same as mine, my mother was ordered to change mine to something else. This, at the time, I thought to be one of the most cruel acts that could be committed upon my rights.

William Wells Brown

If a law commands me to sin I will break it; if it calls me to suffer, I will let it take its course unresistingly.

Angelina Grimké

But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. "Might makes right," and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.

But gentlemen, as long as I am an American Citizen, and as long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject.

Elijah Parish Lovejoy

I grew up like a neglected weed—ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.

Irony is jesting hidden behind gravity. Humor is gravity concealed behind the jest.

No class is safe unless government is so arranged that each class has in its hands the means of protecting itself. That is the idea of republics.

Wendell Phillips

I will answer anything I can with honor, but not about others.

John Brown (abolitionist)

The ultimate aim of the human mind, in all its efforts, is to become acquainted with Truth.

Our nerves and sinews, our tears and blood have been sacrificed on the altar of this nation's avarice. Our unpaid labor has been a stepping-stone to its financial success. Some of its dividends must surely be ours.

Sojourner Truth

The slave power dares anything, and it can be conquered only by the united masses of the people. From Congress to the people, I appeal.

Make people happy and there will not be half the quarreling, or a tenth part of the wickedness there now is.

Lydia Maria Child

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.

In Virgil's account of the good housewife, who rises early in order to measure out the work of the household, and in Solomon's description of the thrifty woman of his time, one sees the value set upon feminine industry and economy in times far removed from our own.

Julia Ward Howe