Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes

When I Was Nearly Twelve Years Old, My Kind Mistress Sickened And Died.

During The First Years Of My Service In Dr. Flint's Family, I Was Accustomed To Share Some Indulgences With The Children Of My Mistress

Notwithstanding My Grandmother's Long And Faithful Service To Her Owners, Not One Of Her Children Escaped The Auction Block. These God-breathing Machines Are No More, In The Sight Of Their Masters, Than The Cotton They Plant, Or The Horses They Tend.

Southern Women Often Marry A Man Knowing That He Is The Father Of Many Little Slaves. They Do Not Trouble Themselves About It.

When I Was Six Years Old, My Mother Died; And Then, For The First Time, I Learned, By The Talk Around Me, That I Was A Slave.

When My Babe Was Born, They Said It Was Premature. It Weighed Only Four Pounds; But God Let It Live.

Hot Weather Brings Out Snakes And Slaveholders, And I Like One Class Of The Venomous Creatures As Little As I Do The Other.

Every Where The Years Bring To All Enough Of Sin And Sorrow; But In Slavery The Very Dawn Of Life Is Darkened By These Shadows

There Must Be Sophistry In All This; But The Condition Of A Slave Confuses All Principles Of Morality, And, In Fact, Renders The Practice Of Them Impossible.

The Slave Child Had No Thought For The Morrow; But There Came That Blight, Which Too Surely Waits On Every Human Being Born To Be A Chattel.

The Secrets Of Slavery Are Concealed Like Those Of The Inquisition.

But To The Slave Mother New Year's Day Comes Laden With Peculiar Sorrows. She Sits On Her Cold Cabin Floor, Watching The Children Who May All Be Torn From Her The Next Morning And Often Does She Wish That She And They Might Die Before The Day Dawns.