William Wells Brown
Birthdate: c. 1814
Birthplace: Montgomery County, Kentucky, USA
Date of Death: November 6, 1884
Occupation: Abolitionist and Author
Profile: Best known for
Clotel.
Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wells_Brown
Number of Quotes: 41
A big part of being a well-adjusted person is accepting that you can't be good at everything.
A few weeks after, on our downward passage, the boat took on board, at Hannibal, a drove of slaves, bound for the New Orleans market. They numbered
from fifty to sixty, consisting of men and women from eighteen to forty years of age. A drove of slaves on a southern steamboat, bound for the cotton or
sugar regions, is an occurrence so common, that no one, not even the passengers, appear to notice it, though they clank their chains at every step.
All I demand for the black man is, that the white people shall take their heels off his neck, and let him have a chance to rise by his own efforts.
After selling out this cargo of human flesh...
Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave
All I demand for the black man is, that the white people shall take their heels off his neck, and let him have a chance to rise by his own efforts.
Be earnest and live to the truth.
But, sad to say, Jefferson is not the
only American statesman who has spoken high-sounding words in favour of freedom, and then left his own children to die slaves.
Clotel
Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous.
Clotel
He was a regular Yankee from New England. The Yankees are noted for making the most cruel overseers.
Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave
Here were two of the softer sex, accustomed to the fondest indulgence, surrounded by all the refinements of
life, and with all the timidity that such a life could produce, bartered away like cattle in Smithfield market.
I had long since made up my mind that I would not trust myself in the hands of any man, white or
colored. The slave is brought up to look upon every white man as an enemy to him and his race...
Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave
I know that upon 4th of July, our 4th of July orators talk of Liberty, while three million of their own country men are groaning in abject Slavery. This
is called the land of the free and the home of the brave
; it is called the asylum of the oppressed
; and some have been foolish enough to call
it the Cradle of Liberty.
If it is the cradle of liberty,
they have rocked the child to death. It is dead long since, and yet we talk about
democracy and republicanism, while one-sixth of our countrymen are clanking their chains upon the very soil which our fathers moistened with their blood.
I was not only hunting for my liberty, but also hunting for my name.
Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave
I was once severely flogged for telling a stranger that I was not born a slave.
I would have the Constitution torn in shreds and scattered to the four winds of heaven. Let us destroy the Constitution and build
on its ruins the temple of liberty. I have brothers in slavery. I have seen chains placed on their limbs and beheld them captive.
I would think of Victoria's domain, And
in a moment I seemed to be there! But the fear of being taken again, Soon hurried me back to despair.
It is not our boast of freedom,
said he, that will cause us to be respected abroad. It is not our loud talk in favour of liberty that will
cause us to be regarded as friends of human freedom; but our acts will be scrutinised by the people of other countries.
Known to God only is the amount of human
agony and suffering which sends its cry from the slave markets and Negro pens, unheard and unheeded by man up to
his ear; mothers weeping for their children, breaking the night-silence with the shrieks of their breaking hearts.
Look at society in the states where temperance views prevail, and you will there see real happiness.
No refuge is found on our unhallowed ground, For the wretched in Slavery's manacles bound; While our
star-spangled banner in vain boasts to wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
People don't follow titles, they follow courage.
Society did not take me up; I took myself up. I did not ask society to take me up. All I asked of the white people was to get out of the way.
Someone must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen to me to do so. The awful death roll
called every week is appalling, not only because of the lives taken, the cruelty and outrage to the victims, but because of the prejudice it fosters.
The American Union sanctions the deed. The Constitution shields the criminals.
Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave
The duty I owe to the slave, to truth, and to God,
demands that I should use my pen and tongue so long as life and health are vouchsafed to me to employ them, or until the last
chain shall fall from the limbs of the last slave in America and the world.
The last great struggle for our rights; the battle for our own civilization, is entirely with ourselves, and the problem is to be solved by us.
The last struggle for our rights, the battle for our civilization, is entirely with ourselves.
Shorter version commonly reproduced from the preceding statement.
The thought of death was nothing frightful to me.
Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave
This is called the land of the free and the home of the brave
; it is called the asylum of the oppressed,
and some have
been foolish enough to call it the Cradle of Liberty.
If it is the Cradle of Liberty,
they have rocked the child to death.
This is emphatically an age of discoveries; but I will venture the assertion, that none but an
American slaveholder could have discovered that a man born in a country was not a citizen of it.
Though slavery is thought, by some, to be mild in Missouri, when compared with the cotton, sugar and rice growing
States, yet no part of our slave-holding country, is more noted for the barbarity of its inhabitants, than St. Louis.
Unbind, unbind my galling chain, And set, oh! set me free: No longer say that I’ll disdain The gift of liberty.
We cannot tell the evils that exist in the southern States. Like the painter who stands idle by the side of
his picture, waiting for the crowd to go out before lifting the screen from the canvas, for fear of frightening
his visitors with the unfinished work, so we must wait and let the future historian complete the picture.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created free and equal; that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable rights;
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Were I about to tell you the evils of Slavery, to represent to you the Slave in his lowest degradation, I should wish to
take you, one at a time, and whisper it to you. Slavery has never been represented; Slavery never can be represented.
Lecture to the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Salem, Massachusetts, 1847.
What! preach and enslave men? Give thanks —and rob thy own afflicted poor? Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then Bolt hard the captive’s door?
When this boy was brought to Dr. Young, his name being William, the same as mine, my mother was ordered to change mine to
something else. This, at the time, I thought to be one of the most cruel acts that could be committed upon my rights.
Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave
Who dies best, the soldier who falls for your sake, or the fly in my whiskey-glass?
Why, every man must make equality for himself. No society, no government can make this equality. I do not expect the slave of the south
to jump into equality; all I claim for him is, that he may be allowed to jump into liberty, and let him make equality for himself.
With the growing population of slaves in the Southern States of America, there is a fearful
increase of half whites, most of whose fathers are slaveowners and their mothers slaves.
Clotel
You may place the slave where you please; you may dry up to your utmost the fountains of his feelings, the springs of his thought; you may yoke him to your
labour, as an ox which liveth only to work, and worketh only to live; you may put him under any process which, without destroying his value as a slave, will
debase and crush him as a rational being; ... it is a torch lit up in his soul by the hand of Deity, and never meant to be extinguished by the hand of man.
Last on Earth
