Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes About Slavery

Quotes about: Slavery

• When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Girl, Heart, Men

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (2006). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Literary Touchstone Classic”, p.92, Prestwick House Inc

• No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Giving, Literature, Adequate

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.79

• The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Believe, Vices, Degradation

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.45

• 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.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Daughter, Father, Son

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.81

• Could you have seen that mother clinging to her child, when they fastened the irons upon his wrists; could you have heard her heart-rending groans, and seen her bloodshot eyes wander wildly from face to face, vainly pleading for mercy; could you have witnessed that scene as I saw it, you would exclaim, Slavery is damnable!

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Mother, Children, Eye

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.38

• Death is better than slavery.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Slavery

  Harriet Ann Jacobs, Lydia Maria Child (2011). “The Deeper Wrong: Or, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.96, Cambridge University Press

• Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Years, Sorrow, Shadow

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (2006). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Literary Touchstone Classic”, p.38, Prestwick House Inc

• The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Secret, Literature, Slavery

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.55

• If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Southern, Soul, Literature

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.81

• The slave child had no thought for the morrow; but there came that blight, which too surely waits on every human being born to be a chattel.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Children, Slave Girl, Waiting

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.15

• I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. 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. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Children, Lying, Father

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (2015). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: An Autobiographical Account of an Escaped Slave and Abolitionist”, p.18, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

• Notwithstanding my grandmother's long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Horse, Children, Block

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.16

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