George Washington Williams

“ I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. ”

“ Here is a picture that every Negro in the country may contemplate with satisfaction and pride. In the stronghold of slavery, under the shadow of the legalized institution of slavery, within earshot of the slave-auctioneer's hammer, amid distressing circumstances, poverty, and proscription, three unlettered ex-slaves, upon the threshold of the nineteenth century, sowed the seed of education for the Negro race in the District of Columbia, from which an abundant harvest has been gathered, and will be gathered till the end of time! ”

“ A Union half free and half slave; a dual government, if not in fact, certainly in the brains and hearts of the people; two civilizations at eternal and inevitable war with each other; a Union with the canker-worm of slavery in it, impairing its strength every year and threatening its life; a Union in which two hostile ideas of political economy were at work, and where unpaid slave labor was inimical to the interests of the free workingmen. ”

“ It is slavery that renews the strife. It is slavery that again wants room. It is slavery with its insatiate demand for more slave territory and more slave States. And what does slavery ask for now? Why, sir, it demands that a time-honored and sacred compact shall be rescinded—a compact which has endured through a whole generation—a compact which has been universally regarded as inviolable, North and South—a compact, the constitutionality of which few have doubted, and by which all have consented to abide. ”

“ Now, under the elevating and cherishing influence of the American Anti-slavery Society, the colored race, like the white, furnishes Corinthian capitals for the noblest temples. Aroused by the American Anti-slavery Society, the very white men who had forgotten and denied the claim of the black man to the rights of humanity, now thunder that claim at every gate, from cottage to capitol, from school-house to university, from the railroad carriage to the house of God. He has a place at their firesides, a place in their hearts—the man whom they once cruelly hated for his color. ”

“ Like men coming from long confinement in a dark dungeon, the first rays of freedom blinded their expectant eyes. They were almost delirious with joy. The hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, the pain and waiting, the prayers and tears of the cruel years of slavery gave place to a long train of events that swept them out into the rapid current of a life totally different from the checkered career whence they had just emerged. It required time, patience, and extraordinary wisdom on the part of the Government to solve the problem of this people's existence—of this "Nation born in a day." ”

“ United States must, and will, sooner or later, become entirely a slave-holding nation, or entirely a free labor nation. Either the cotton and rice fields of South Carolina, and the sugar plantations of Louisiana, will ultimately be tilled by free-labor, and Charleston and New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye fields and wheat fields of Massachusetts and New York must again be surrendered by their farmers to the slave culture and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men. ”

“ No officer, whose privilege it was to command or observe the conduct of these troops, has ever hesitated to give a full and cheerful endorsement of their worth as men, their loyalty as Americans, and their eminent qualifications for the duties and dangers of military life. No history of the war has ever been written, no history of the war ever can be written, without mentioning the patience, endurance, fortitude, and heroism of the Negro soldiers who prayed, wept, fought, bled, and died for the preservation of the Union of the United States of America! ”

“ Greeley's philosophy was as destructive as his logic was defective. He wished the slave free, not because he loved him; but because of the deep concern he had for the welfare of the free, white working-men of America. He was willing the Negro should be free, but never suggested any plan of relief for his social condition, or prescribed for his spiritual and intellectual health. He handled the entire Negro problem with the icy fingers of the philosopher, and always applied the flinty logic of abstract political economy. He was an anti-slavery advocate, but not an abolitionist. ”

“ We cannot alter our course one hair's breadth, nor accept a compromise of our principles for the hearty adoption of our principles. I am for meddling with slavery everywhere—attacking it by night and by day, in season and out of season (no, it can never be out of season) —in order to effect its overthrow. (Loud applause.) Higher yet will be my cry. Upward and onward! No union with slave-holders! Down with this slave-holding government! ”

“ We must have scouts, guides, spies, cooks, teamsters, diggers, and choppers, from the blacks of the South—whether we allow them to fight for us or not—or we shall be baffled and repelled. As one of the millions who would gladly have avoided this struggle at any sacrifice but that of principle and honor, but who now feel that the triumph of the Union is indispensable not only to the existence of our country, but to the well-being of mankind, I entreat you to render a hearty and unequivocal obedience to the law of the land. ”

“ Despised, persecuted, and unappreciated while in the flesh, they are honored after death, and enrolled among earth's good and great, her wise and brave. The shock Brown gave the walls of the slave institution was felt from its centre to its utmost limits. It was the entering wedge; it laid bare the accursed institution, and taught good men everywhere to hate it with a perfect hatred. Slavery received its death wound at the hands of a "lonely old man." When he smote Virginia, the non-resistants, the anti-slavery men, learned a lesson. ”

“ Shall we protect and insure the ordinary treatment of a prisoner of war? Under it, every negro yet captured has suffered death or been sent back to the hell of slavery from which he had escaped. The bloody massacre of black prisoners at Murfreesboro, brooked, so far as the public knows, no retaliation at Washington. The black servants captured at Galveston—free men and citizens of Massachusetts—were sold into slavery and remained there. In every instance in which they have had the opportunity, the rebels have enforced their barbarous proclamation. ”

“ Slavery shrinks from the light; it hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be reproved. To tear off the mask from this abominable system, to expose it to the light of heaven, aye, to the heat of the sun, that it may burn and wither it out of existence, is my object in coining to this country. I want the slaveholder surrounded, as by a wall of anti-slavery fire, so that he may see the condemnation of himself and his system glaring down in letters of light. ”

“ His soul had for many years communed with the God of nature; had been taught by the mighty workings of truth, feeling, and genius within, and by the world without, that he was not to be confined to earth forever, but that beyond the deep blue sky, into which he so much longed to peer, there dwelt the Creator of all things, and there the home of the good! ”

“ The rebels are everywhere using the late anti-negro riots in the North—as they have long used your officers' treatment of negroes in the South—to convince the slaves that they have nothing to hope from a Union success—that we mean in that case to sell them into a bitter bondage to defray the cost of the war. Let them impress this as a truth on the great mass of their ignorant and credulous bondmen, and the Union will never be restored—never. We can not conquer ten millions of people united in solid phalanx against us, powerfully aided by Northern sympathizers and European allies. ”

“ I should be exceedingly glad to know that there would never be another slave State admitted into the Union; but I must add, that if slavery shall be kept out of the territories during the territorial existence of any one given territory, and then the people shall, having a fair chance and a clear field, when they come to adopt the constitution, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a slave constitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of the institution among them, I see no alternative, if we own the country, but to admit them into the Union. ”

“ If we say no, it is no! Slavery is a curse to the North. It impoverishes the South, and demoralizes both. It is the parent of treason, the seedling of tyranny, and the fountain-source of all the ills that have infected our life as a people, being the central cause of all our conflicts of the past and the war of to-day. ”

“ A deeply rooted prejudice shut the Negro out from the trades. He could not acquire the art of setting type, civil engineering, building machinery, house carpentering, or any of the trades. The schools of medicine, law, and theology were not open to him; and even if he secured admission into some gentleman's office, or instruction from some divine, the future gave him no promise. The white wings of hope were broken in an ineffectual attempt to move against the bitter winds of persecution, under the dark sky of hate and proscription. ”

“ It is true that a great many Negroes died during the first years of their new life. The joy of emancipation and the excitement that disturbed business swept the Negroes into the large cities. Like the shepherds who left their flocks on the plains and went into Bethlehem to see the promised redemption, these people sought the centres of excitement. The large cities were overrun with them. The demand for unskilled labor was not great. From mere spectators they became idlers, helpless and offensive to industrious society. ”

“ THE Government could not escape the logic of the position it took when it made the Negro a soldier, and invoked his aid in putting down the slave-holders' Rebellion. As a soldier he stood in line of promotion: the Government destroyed the Confederacy when it placed muskets in the hands of the slaves; and at the close of the war had to legally render slavery forever impossible in the United States. The bloody deduction of the great struggle had to be made a living, legal verity in the Constitution, and hence the Thirteenth Amendment. ”

“ Every year since the close of the Rebellion the Negro has been taking on better and purer traits of character. Possessed of an impressible nature, a discriminating sense of the beautiful, and a deep, pure taste for music, his progress has been phenomenal. Strong in his attachments, gentle in manners, confiding, hopeful, enduring in affection, and benevolent to a fault, there is no limit to the outcome of his character. ”

“ The idea of Miss Miner in planting a school here was to train up a class of Colored girls, in the midst of slave institutions, who should show forth in their culture and capabilities, to the country and to mankind, that the race was fit for something higher than the degradation which rested upon them. The amazing energy with which this frail woman prosecuted her work is well known to those who took knowledge of her career. She visited the Colored people of her district from house to house, and breathed a new life into them pertaining to the education of their daughters. ”

“ Can we be free? Can we have work, and can we have our rights in Kansas? Let him go next to the barracks and watch the tired, ragged, hungry, scared-looking negroes as they come by the dozens on every train. If he is not prompted by shame, then from caution necessary to the success of his errand, let him here conceal the fact that he is a Democrat, for these half-famished and terrified negroes have been fleeing from Democrats in the South, and in their ignorance they may not be able to comprehend the nice distinction between a Northern and Southern Democrat. ”

“ The soul of such a people is surcharged with an almost incredulous amount of poetry, song, and rude but grand eloquence. And when the songs that cheered and lighted many a heavy heart in the starless night of bondage shall have been rescued and purified by the art of music, the hymnology of this century will be greatly indebted to this much-abused people. So, under this religious garb, woven by the cruel experiences consequent upon slavery, the lion slumbers in the Negro. ”