Slavery in the United States Quotes

I shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation; nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation.

The people of Illinois agreed with the people of Massachusetts [about slavery] except perhaps they do not so constantly keep thinking about it.

Force sometimes does change things. I see not reason to believe that slavery in America would not have continued to the present day if it did not meet a violent end.

At the time the Constitution was adopted, the plain unmistakable spirit of that age, towards slavery, was hostility to the principle, and toleration, only by necessity.

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred ans sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thence forward, and forever free.

If Lee had won, I'd still be a slave.

Lincoln emancipated nobody. The man freed not a single slave.

The United States have a coffle of four millions of slaves. They are determined to keep them in this condition; and Massachusettsis one of the confederated overseers to prevent their escape.

The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.

If the states had to vote on slavery, we would have lost the vote.

President Lincoln desires the right to hold slaves to be fully recognized. The [Civil] war is prosecuted for the Union, hence no question concerning slavery will arise.

The slave-owning South won the subsequent ideological war…the consensus of history was that the Civil War had little to do with slavery.

The proceedings of this House in 1790, in reference to petitions on the matter of the slave trade, and of slavery in the States, have been cited. It has been said that those petitions were not received.

Another clause in the Constitution is a contract on the part of the non-slaveholding States to seize and restore runaway slaves--but why restore when you have taught the slave that he has a right to freedom?

Slaves may be sold and transferred from one to another without any statutory restriction or limitation, as to the separation of parents and children, &c., except in the State of Louisiana.

Neither General Hunter, nor any other commander, or person, has been authorized by the Government of the United States, to make proclamations declaring the slaves of any State free; and that the supposed proclamation, now in question, … is altogether void, so far as respects such declaration.

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were all written by affluent white males, but to discuss them in any meaningful way, you have to bring in the roles of African Americans - the enslaved blacks - and the roles of women, who were scarcely acknowledged by those documents. You have to discuss why slavery wasn't outlawed by the Constitution, why women weren't given the votes. The Bill of Rights isn't about dead white males anymore, and it's not just about live white males either; it's about every minority group that exists.

The character of Slavery is not to be discussed. We have an indubitable right to demand of the Free States to suppress such discussion, totally and promptly.

In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions.

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.

… there is no right, and ought to be no inclination of the people of the free states to enter into the slave states, and interfere with the question of slavery at all.

I didn’t think that all these soldiers cared about slavery, but they did.