Slavery Resistance Quotes

Will the slave fight? If any man asks you, tell him No. But if anyone asks you will a Negro fight, tell him Yes!

I'm a descendant of someone bought and sold, and brought in 1619 in what was to become the United States.

'A living dog is better than a dead lion.' Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anything about it.

When federal marshals in Boston arrested Anthony Burns in 1854, a vigilance committee gathered at Faneuil Hall and declared that “resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” Heavily armed with axes and pistols, they marched to the courthouse, where, in the ensuing battle, a federal officer was killed. In response, President Franklin Pierce, a Northern Democrat, mobilized the U.S. Army and Navy to transport Burns back to Virginia, at a cost of $ 100,000 (roughly equivalent to $ 4 million in 2012). As soldiers escorted the fugitive down the streets of Boston, church bells tolled in somber protest, and homeowners and shopkeepers turned their American flags upside down in a show of defiance.

They [the slaves] have stabbed themselves for freedom—jumped into the waves for freedom—starved for freedom—fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot—and their tyrants have been their historians!

I don't think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion.

So long as this country is cursed with slavery, so too will it be cursed with vampires.

It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of slavery. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.