William Wells Brown

“ But I do not despair; for the negro has that intellectual genius which God has planted in the mind of man, that distinguishes him from the rest of creation, and which needs only cultivation to make it bring forth fruit. No nation has ever been found, which, by its own unaided efforts, by some powerful inward impulse, has arisen from barbarism and degradation to civilization and respectability. There is nothing in race or blood, in color or features, that imparts susceptibility of improvement to one race over another. The mind left to itself from infancy, without culture, remains a blank. ”

“ And, now that I am making my escape, you feel afraid, if I reach Canada, and there should be war with England, that I will take up arms against my own country. Sir, I have no country but the grave; and I'll seek freedom there before I will again be taken back to slavery. There is no justice for me at the south; every right of my race is trampled in the dust, until humanity bleeds at every pore. I am bound for Canada, and woe to him that shall attempt to arrest me. If it comes to the worst, I will die fighting for freedom. ”

“ Hunger, thirst, fatigue, and loss of sleep he seemed made to endure as if by peculiarity of constitution. He bore upon his [Pg 111] arms and breast the marks of his tribe. Inured by exposure and toil to a hard life, his frame possessed a wonderful power of endurance. He was a bold and turbulent spirit, whose barbarous eloquence lay in expressive signs rather than in words. What is most strange in the history of Dessalines is, that he was a savage, a slave, a soldier, a general, and died, when an emperor, under the dagger of a Brutus.
A more courageous man than he never lived. ”

“ The blacks and the whites live together in Jamaica; they are all prosperous, and the island in a better condition than it ever was before the act of emancipation was passed.
But they tell us, "If the slaves are emancipated, we won't receive them upon an equality." 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. ”

“ These are the aspirations of man, without regard to country, clime, or color.
"What shall we do with the slave of the south? Expatriate him," say the haters of the negro. Expatriate him for what? He has cleared up the swamps of the south, and has put the soil under cultivation; he has built up her towns, and cities, and villages; he has enriched the north and Europe with his cotton, and sugar, and rice; and for this you would drive him out of the country! "What shall be done with the slaves if they are freed?" ”

“ The disgrace that once rested upon the head of the black man, now hovers over the head of every man and woman whom I have the honor to address this evening, just in proportion as they shall dare to stand erect before the oligarchy of slaveholders in the southern portion of our country; and God hasten forward the day when not only Music Hall, but every other hall in the city of Boston, the Athens of America, shall be made eloquent with tones that shall speak, as man has never before spoken in this country, for the cause of universal freedom. ”

“ Next morning, as the passengers were assembling in the cabin and on deck, and while the slaves were running about waiting on or looking for their masters, poor Joe was seen entering his new master's state-room, boots in hand.
Such is the uncertainty of a slave's life. He goes to bed at night the pampered servant of his young master, with whom he has played in childhood, and who would not see his slave abused under any consideration, and gets up in the morning the property of a man whom he has never before seen. ”

“ Banneker believed in the divinity of reason, and in the omnipotence of the human understanding with Liberty for its handmaid. The intellect impregnated by science and multiplied by time, it appeared to him, must triumph necessarily over all the resistance of matter. He had faith in liberty, truth, and virtue. His remains still rest in the slave state where he lived and died, with no stone to mark the spot or tell that it is the grave of Benjamin Banneker. ”

“ Toussaint's career as a Christian, a statesman, and a general, will lose nothing by a comparison with that of Washington. Each was the leader of an oppressed and outraged people, each had a powerful enemy to contend with, and each succeeded in founding a government in the new world. Toussaint's government made liberty its watchword, incorporated it in its constitution, abolished the slave trade, and made freedom universal amongst the people. Washington's government incorporated slavery and the slave trade, and enacted laws by which chains were fastened upon the limbs of millions of people. ”

“ It was there that the genius of the embryo artist was struggling for development. Nearly every wall in the dwelling had designs or faces pencilled upon it, and many were the complaints that the women made against the lad. At last he turned his steps towards Boston, with the hope that he might get a situation with a painter, never dreaming that his color would be a barrier to the accomplishment of such an object. Weeks were spent by the friendless, homeless, and penniless young man, and every artist had seen his face and heard his wish to become a painter. ”

“ Can it be possible that because the nation has robbed us for more than two centuries, and now finds that she can do it no longer and preserve a good character among the nations, she, out of hatred, wishes to banish, because she cannot continue to rob, us? Or why is it? I will tell you. The free people of color have succeeded in spite of every thing; and we are to-day a living refutation of that shameless assertion that we cannot take care of ourselves. Abject as our condition has been, our whole lives prove us to be superior to the influences that have been brought to bear upon us to crush us. ”

“ It is well understood that he is not the author of all the works that appear under his name, but that young writers gain a living by working out the plots and situations that his fecund brain suggests. When the novel or the play is complete, Dumas gives it a revision, touches up the dialogue, dashes in here and there a spirited scene of his own, and then receives from the publisher an enormous sum. Undeniably a man of great genius, endowed with true fertility of imagination, and masterly power of expression, his influence has been great. ”

“ Reduced to the last extremity by starvation, the French general sued for peace, and promised that he would immediately leave the island. It was accepted by the blacks, and Rochambeau prepared to return to France. The French embarked in their vessels of war, and the standard of the blacks once more waved over Cape City, the capital of St. Domingo. As the French sailed from the island, they saw the tops of the mountains lighted up. It was not a blaze kindled for war, but for freedom. Every heart beat for liberty, and every voice shouted for joy. ”

“ We are no better than our Creator. He has turned them loose, and why should not we? But would you let them all stay here?' Why not? What better is here than there? Will they occupy more room as freemen than as slaves? Is the presence of a black freeman less agreeable than that of a black slave? Is an object of your injustice and cruelty a more ungrateful sight than one of your justice and benevolence? ”

“ As colored men, we only ask to be allowed to do with ourselves, subject only to the same great laws for the welfare of human society which apply to other men—Jews, Gentiles, Barbarian, Scythian. Let us stand upon our own legs, work with our own hands, and eat bread in the sweat of our own brows. When you, our white fellow-countrymen, have attempted to do any thing for us, it has generally been to deprive us of some right, power, or privilege, which you yourselves would die before you would submit to have taken from you. ”

“ The clear-minded and thoughtful colored men of America must mark the significance of these facts, and begin to feel their weight. For more than two centuries we have been working our way from the deep and dire degradation into which slavery had plunged us. We have made considerable headway. By the vigorous use of the opportunities of our partial freedom we have been enabled, with the divine blessing, to reach a position of respectability and character. We have pressed somewhat into the golden avenues of science, intelligence, and learning. ”

“ It is not in the power of every one to become great. No great approximation, even toward that which is easiest attained, can ever be accomplished without the exercise of much thought and vigor of action; and thus is demonstrated the supremacy of that law which gives excellence only when earned, and assigns to labor its unfailing reward.
It is this energy of character, industry, and labor, combined with great intellectual powers, which has given Dr. Smith so much influence in New York. As a speaker, he is eloquent, and, at times, brilliant, but always clear and to the point. ”

“ On seeing the ships enter the harbor, the heroic chief said, "Here come the enslavers of our race. All France is coming to St. Domingo, to try again to put the fetters upon our limbs; but not France, with all [Pg 101] her troops of the Rhine, the Alps, the Nile, the Tiber, nor all Europe to help her, can extinguish the soul of Africa. That soul, when once the soul of a man, and no longer that of a slave, can overthrow the pyramids and the Alps themselves, sooner than again be crushed down into slavery." ”

“ If we must still remember with humiliation that the Confederate flag yet waves where our national colors were first struck, we should be all the more prompt to recognize the merit that has put into our possession the first trophy from Fort Sumter. And the country should feel doubly humbled if there is not magnanimity enough to acknowledge a gallant action, because it was the head of a black man that conceived, and the hand of a black man that executed it. ”

“ Domingo dead in his cell. Thus terminated the career of a self-made man.
Toussaint was of prepossessing appearance, of middle stature, and possessed an iron frame. His dignified, calm, and unaffected features, and broad and well-developed forehead, would cause him to be selected, in any company of men, as one born for a leader. Endowed by nature with high qualities of mind, he owed his elevation to his own energies and his devotion to the welfare and freedom of his race. ”

“ And by us and our cause the character and greatness of individuals and of nations in this day and generation of the world are to be decided, either for good or evil; and so, in all coming times, the memory and the fame of the chief actors now on the stage will be decided by their relation to our cause. The discoveries of science, the unfoldings of literature, the dazzlings of genius, all fade before the demands of this cause. This is the age of BROTHERHOOD AND HUMANITY, and the negro race is its most distinguished test and criterion. ”

“ A grave popular error, and one destructive of personal usefulness, and obstructive to literary progress, is the free-and-easy belief that because a man has the faculty of investing common things with uncommon ideas, therefore he can write a poem.
The idea of poetry is to give pleasurable emotions, and the world listens to a poet's voice as it listens to the singing of a summer bird; that which is the most suggestive of freedom and eloquence being the most admired. Professor Reason has both the genius and the artistic skill. ”

“ Never was an experiment more severely tested than that of emancipation in the West Indies.
Nevertheless, the principles of freedom triumphed; not a drop of blood was shed by the enfranchised blacks; the colonies have arisen from the blight which they labored under in the time of slavery; the land has increased in value; and, above all, that which is more valuable than cotton, sugar, or rice—the moral and intellectual condition of both blacks and whites is in a better state now than ever before. ”

“ No person knew better than he the art of governing the people under his jurisdiction. The greater part of the population loved him to idolatry. Veneration for Toussaint was not confined to the boundaries of St. Domingo; it ran through Europe; and in France his name was frequently pronounced in the senate with the eulogy of polished eloquence. No one can look back upon his career without feeling that Toussaint was a remarkable man. Without being bred to the science of arms, he became a valiant soldier, and baffled the skill of the most experienced generals that had followed Napoleon. ”

“ In the future history of our country, their names to us will shine as brightly as that of the glorious old hero, who, with his colored and white followers, so strategically captured Harper's Ferry, and touched a chord in the life of our country that will vibrate throughout the land, and will not cease until the last fetter has been struck from the limbs of the last bondman in the nation ”

“ This cause has produced the development of the most noble character of modern times—has given the world a Wilberforce and a Clarkson. Lowly and depressed as we have been, and as we now are, yet our interests and our welfare have agitated the chief countries of the world, and are now before all other questions, shaking this nation to its very centre. The providences of God have placed the negro race before Europe and America in the most commanding position. From the sight of us no nation, no statesman, no ecclesiastic, and no ecclesiastical institution, can escape. ”

“ What shall be done with the negro, if emancipated? Deal justly with him. He is a human being, capable of judging between good and evil, right and wrong, liberty and slavery, and is as much a subject of law as any other man; therefore, deal justly with him. He is, like other men, sensible of the motives of reward and punishment. Give him wages for his work, and let hunger pinch him if he don't work. ”

“ A slave population exercises the most pernicious influence upon the manners, habits, and character of those among whom it exists. Lisping infancy learns the vocabulary of abusive epithets, and struts, the embryo tyrant of its little domain. The consciousness of superior destiny takes possession of his mind at its earliest dawning, and love of power and rule 'grows with his growth and strengthens with his strength.' Unless enabled to rise above the operation of those powerful causes, he enters the world with miserable notions of self-importance, and under the government of an unbridled temper. ”

“ Well might he feel the blood curdle in his veins, when he remembered that in every southern household there may be a Nat Turner, in whose soul God has lighted a torch of liberty that cannot be extinguished by the hand of man. The slaveholder should understand that he lives upon a volcano, which may burst forth at any moment, and give freedom to his victim. ”

“ He is a man of lofty reason; natural, and without pretension; always master of himself; brilliant in the art of exposing and abstracting. Few persons can handle a subject, with which they are familiar, better than he. There is a kind of eloquence issuing from the depth of the soul as from a spring, rolling along its copious floods, sweeping all before it, overwhelming by its [Pg 183] very force, carrying, upsetting, ingulfing its adversaries, and more dazzling and more thundering than the bolt which leaps from crag to crag. This is the eloquence of Frederick Douglass. ”