Slavery in the United States

I shudder when I think of the calamities which slavery is likely to produce in this country. You would think me mad if I were to describe my anticipations...

— Slavery in the United States

Anything, no matter how bizarre, was cited as the cause for slave rebellions except for the most obvious source: slavery.

— Slavery in the United States

Slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States, is none other than the most barbarous, unprovoked and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens against another portion, the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment and hopeless servitude, or absolute extermination, in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence.

— Slavery in the United States

I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood. I had as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done.

— Slavery in the United States

This is a beautiful country.

— Slavery in the United States

This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free.

— Slavery in the United States

Slavery was the wickedest thing in the world, the greatest curse the earth had ever felt... The sin of slavery is so clearly written out, and so much talked against, that if any one says he don't know, and has not heard, he must, I think, be a liar.

— Slavery in the United States

Slavery is not the only story about black people. It's only a small story! Don't they know if tomorrow a slave ship arrived at Elmina to carry us to America, so many Ghanaians would climb on board that this ship would sink to the bed of the ocean from our weight?

— Slavery in the United States

We warn the North, that every one of the leading Abolitionists is agitating the negro slavery question merely as a means to attain ulterior ends ... [they are] committed to Socialism and Communism, ... to no private property, no church, no law, no government, --- to free love, free lands, free women and free churches.

— Slavery in the United States

The sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.

— Slavery in the United States

I congratulate you, my dear friend, on the law of your state for suspending the importation of slaves, and for the glory you have justly acquired by endeavoring to prevent it forever. This abomination must have an end, and there is a superior bench reserved in heaven for those who hasten it.

— Slavery in the United States

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government — that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal," and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.

— Slavery in the United States

Slavery is wrong.

— Slavery in the United States

If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.

— Slavery in the United States

Twenty years have passed since that event; it is almost too new in history to make a great impression, but the time will come when it will loom up as one of the greatest of man's achievements, and the name of Abraham Lincoln — who of his own will struck the shackles from the limbs of four millions of people — will be honored thousands of years from now as man's name was never honored before.

— Slavery in the United States

Did America owe something to the slaves whose labor had been stolen? ... That debt... is best discharged through memory, because the slaves are dead and their descendants... are better off as a consequence of their ancestors being hauled from Africa to America.

— Slavery in the United States

Not only do I pray for it, on the score of human dignity, but I can clearly forsee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating it in a common bond of principle.

— Slavery in the United States

When it became clear that slavery was not going away by itself, Americans faced a choice. They could keep their slaves and reject their founding principles. Or they could affirm their principles and limit the growth of slavery, placing it, in Lincoln's words, 'in the course of ultimate extinction'.

— Slavery in the United States