American Slavery Quotes:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

- Abraham Lincoln

topic: War, Believe, Struggle, Causes Of War, Secession

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

- Abraham Lincoln

topic: Life, Strong, Freedom, States Rights, Abolition

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Letter to Albert G. Hodges, 4 Apr. 1864

topic: Thinking, Feelings, Civil War, American Slavery, Anti Slavery

A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.

- Abraham Lincoln

topic: Believe, Fall, Government, States Rights, Divided Government

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

- Abraham Lincoln

topic: Leadership, Inspirational Life, Twilight, Disunity, Dividing

Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Second Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1865

topic: Prayer, War, Men, American Slavery, Us Civil War

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1865

topic: God, Civil War, Unity, Inaugural Address, American Slavery

Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.160, Fordham Univ Press

topic: Inspiration, Slave Labor, Slavery, American Slavery, Slavery In America

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

- Abraham Lincoln

topic: Presidential, Slavery, Emancipation Proclamation, American Civil War, American Slavery

I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

- Abraham Lincoln

topic: Believe, Purpose, Slavery, Inaugural, Inaugural Address

So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: "Fragment on Slavery" ca. 1 July 1854

topic: Selfish, Mistake, Men, American Slavery, Slavery In America

What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle - the sheet anchor of American republicanism.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Speech, Peoria, Ill., 16 Oct. 1854

topic: Men, Anchors, Principles, Republicanism, American Slavery

I never mean, unless some particular circumstances should compel it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.

- George Washington

source: George Washington, Jared Sparks (1835). “The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private”, p.159

topic: Country, Mean, Law, American Slavery

The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Abraham Lincoln (2008). “Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln(1832-1865) (EasyRead Super Large 20pt Edition)”, p.74, ReadHowYouWant.com

topic: Giving Up, Russia, Crowns, American Slavery, Slavery In America

On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks.

- H. Allen Smith

topic: Monday, Morning, Men, Independence And Freedom, Independence Day

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be 'the Union as it was'.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.388, Wildside Press LLC

topic: War, Unions, Way, American Slavery

I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Letter to Horace Greeley, 22 August 1862

topic: Freedom, Men, Wish, Modification, American Slavery

The Almighty has His own purposes.

- Abraham Lincoln

topic: Purpose, Almighty, Inaugural Address, American Slavery

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty

- Abraham Lincoln

topic: Liberty, World, Definitions, American Slavery, Slavery In America

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1865

topic: Powerful, War, Southern, American Slavery, Slavery In America

Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1865

topic: War, Party, Duration, Causes Of War, American Slavery

We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Md., 18 Apr. 1864

topic: Mean, Civil War, Liberty, American Civil War, American Slavery

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pa., 19 Nov. 1863

topic: Change, Freedom, Father, July 4th 1776, Liberty And Equality

I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Speech to 140th Indiana regiment, 17 Mar. 1865

topic: Strong, Freedom, Men, American Slavery, Slavery In America

It is said that the Negro is ignorant. But why is he ignorant? It comes with ill grace from a man who has put out my eyes to makea parade of my blindness,--to reproach me for my poverty when he has wronged me of my money.... If he is poor, what has become of the money he has been earning for the last two hundred and fifty years? Years ago it was said cotton fights and cotton conquers for American slavery. The Negro helped build up that great cotton power in the South, and in the North his sigh was in the whir of its machinery, and his blood and tears upon the warp and woof of its manufactures.

- Frances Harper

topic: Eye, Fighting, Men, Wronged, American Slavery

The greatest evil of American slavery was not involuntary servitude but rather the narrative of racial differences we created to legitimate slavery. Because we never dealt with that evil, I don't think slavery ended in 1865, it just evolved.

- Bryan Stevenson

source: Source: www.progressive.org

topic: Thinking, Differences, Evil, American Slavery

Harriet Tubman fought American slavery single handed and was a pioneer in that organized effort known as the Underground Railroad.

- W. E. B. Du Bois

topic: Effort, Pioneers, Railroads, American Slavery, Underground Railroad

I think then I may safely conclude and I firmly believe that American slavery is not only not a sin but especially commanded by God through Moses and approved by Christ through His Apostles.

- James Henry Hammond

source: David Christy, Albert Taylor Bledsoe, William Harper, Thornton Stringfellow, James Henry Hammond (1860). “Cotton is king”, p.636

topic: Believe, Thinking, Slavery, American Slavery

A startling and engrossing commentary on the complex actuality and continuing heritage of American slavery.

- Sherley Anne Williams

topic: Slavery, Heritage, Continuing, Actuality, American Slavery

Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic.

- Frederick Douglass

source: Frederick Douglass (2017). “Frederick Douglass in Brooklyn”, p.198, Akashic Books

topic: War, Slavery, Republic, John Brown, American Slavery

In every man's mind the good seeds of liberty are planted, and he who brings his fellow down so low, as to make him contented with a condition of slavery, commits the highest crime against God and man.

- Henry Highland Garnet

source: Henry Highland Garnet (1865). “A Memorial Discourse”, p.47, Gale Cengage Learning

topic: Men, Justice, Mind, Perfect Work, American Slavery

Lawrence Hill, a cultural and spiritual descendant of West African griots, has used his vast storytelling talents to create an epic story that spans three continents. The Book of Negroes recites the pain, misery and liberation of one African woman, Aminata Diallo, who was stolen from her homeland and sold into American slavery. Through Aminata, Hill narrates the terrifying story of slavery and puts at the centre a female experience of the African Diaspora. I wept upon reading this story. The Book of Negroes is courageous, breathtaking, simply brilliant.

- Afua Cooper

topic: Spiritual, Pain, Book, Breathtaking, African Women

American slavery was not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will honor them.

- Spike Lee

source: Twitter post from Dec 22, 2012

topic: Holocaust, Honor, Slavery, Spaghetti Western, American Slavery

The tobacco business is a conspiracy against womanhood and manhood. It owes its origin to that scoundrel Sir Walter Raleigh, who was likewise the founder of American slavery.

- John Harvey Kellogg

topic: Smoking, Slavery, Conspiracy, Quit Smoking, Tobacco

The truth is that History, with its imposing capital H, is simply the amalgamation of many quotidian lives lived in very ordinary ways. History is always personal. If you read Holocaust survivor or American slavery survivor narratives, you realize all too well that these great Historical moments were personal to someone at some time.

- Chris Abani

source: "The Rumpus Interview With Chris Abani". Interview with Peter Orner, therumpus.net. February 10, 2014.

topic: Holocaust, Historical, Ordinary, Amalgamation, American Slavery