Frederick Douglass Quotes
My motto is EXTERMINATION.... The slave-holders not only forfeit their right to liberty, but to life itself.
Frederick Douglasss, ~1817-1895, Abolitionist & Editor, Recorder of Deeds, District of Columbia, U. S. Minister to Haiti, Speech to the Free-Soil Party convention, Pittsburgh, PA, August 11, 1852
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Simon Bolivar and other freedom fighters in South America used this quotation to justify numerous acts of retaliation against the Spanish troops controlling their countries.
The critic observed that the South would not give up their slaves voluntarily and that and that vigorous abolition pressure on the South would lead to war and asked Angelina if she would want a civil war. Grimke’s response was predictive of what happened—the most terrible was in U. S. History to end the most terrible cruelty and persecution in American history. Note that she herself was willing to die to end slavery. See {629094}.
“Captain Brown” referred to the radical abolitionist, John Brown, 1800-1859, who was then about to be executed for his violent abolitionist activities in attacking the military arsenal at Harper’s Ferry and planning to arm slaves for a slave revolt. His view of revenge was to eliminate slavery. Note that he was a moral sympathizer of Brown. See {633849}.
The point about the negroes who were born into American slavery being less aggressive than those captured and transported to America is often overlooked. Slavery not only was cruel, moral, and inhuman in its own right, but also took its toll over generations as a result of the psychological effects of the terror of slavery. Despite these, it is amazing how resiliant the American Blacks were under those circumstances. in some cases one or two saves escaped after committing a violent act as they had little to lose for trying as they wold be killed if caught. A few of these escaped to the North and others reached Southern Cities like Charleston where there was a small free black community in which they could be absorbed.
A Cossack revolt had broken out in 1707 and was put down by the Czar’s forces. He then issued what might be one of the first official orders for genocide. Few Cossacks survived.
Most people reading this think at first that if comes out of the Middle Ages, but it is quite contemporary expressing a point of view that holds that the state is but the instrument of and subservient to God as defined by Protestant Fundamentalism.
See Thomas Jefferson: {605051} for a somewhat similar notion.
Andrew had actually contributed money to Brown’s movement. This quotation is a wonderful illustration of the schism that existed in pre-Civil War America. Brown had just led an armed attack on a Federal Facility, been tried and executed. Imagine sympathy and justification for such an act by a leading politician in modern times.
Campbell carried out the order although many MacDonalds escaped in the highlands. The particular massacre has always taken on an even greater infamy because the Campbell murderers had been given food and hospitality by the MacDonalds. This began the most bitter of the Scottish clan feuds that persists into modern times.
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Likewise, Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.
