There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment.
From Harriet Ann Jacobs
Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.
If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year.
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.
But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import.
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.
Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.
If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.
When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.
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