These Scriptures, therefore, are infinitely far from justifying the slavery under consideration; for it cannot be made to appear that one in a thousand of these slaves has done any thing to forfeit his own liberty. – Samuel Hopkins
I speak on due consideration because Britain, France, and Mexico, have abolished slavery, and all other European states are preparing to abolish it as speedily as they can. – William H. Seward
Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery. – Wayne Dyer
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
There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and slavery and North Africa, but there simply is no American history before black people. – Ta-Nehisi Coates
This gun is liberty; hold for certain that the day when you no more have it, you will be returned to slavery. – Toussaint Louverture
It’s a touchy subject, but as a Southerner, you can’t ignore our history any more than a Renaissance painter can ignore the Virgin Mary. And it’s impossible to drive down a road or eat a vegetable or pass a church without being reminded of slavery. – Sally Mann
North as well as South, the Negroes have emerged from slavery into a serfdom of poverty and restricted rights. – W. E. B. Du Bois
I hope some compromise will be entered into between the two parties, slavery & antislavery, which will have the effect of allaying violent passions on both sides. – Zachary Taylor
The slavery at Bufford’s was too fresh in my recollection to let me care to bind myself again. From the time that I took my nose off that lithographic stone, I have had no master, and never shall have any. – Winslow Homer
In a word, if any kind of slavery can be vindicated by the Holy Scriptures, we are already sure our making and holding the Negroes our slaves, as we do, cannot be vindicated by any thing we can find there, but is condemned by the whole of divine revelation. – Samuel Hopkins
It appears that the present-day form of African American English is not the inheritance of the period of slavery, but the creation of the second half of the 20th century. – William Labov
Racism is an effect of slavery, not the other way around. Once slavery was abolished, not only did racism not disappear, neither did the economic system it upheld. – Sarah Churchwell
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