The Project Gutenberg Project

Of all the passengers who had hitherto arrived with bruised and mangled bodies received at the hands of slave-holders, none brought a back so shamefully lacerated by the lash as Thomas Madden. Not a single spot had been exempted from the excoriating cow-hide. A most bloody picture did the broad back and shoulders of Thomas present to the eye as he bared his wounds for inspection. While it was sad to think, that millions of men, women, and children throughout the South were liable to just such brutal outrages as Thomas had received, it was a satisfaction to think, that this outrage had made a freeman of him.

- William Still, The Underground Railroad: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narrative, Letters &c. (1871) [full text]

Harriet Shephard, the mother of five children, for whom she felt of course a mother’s love, could not bear the thought of having her offspring compelled to wear the miserable yoke of Slavery, as she had been compelled to do. By her own personal experience, Harriet could very well judge what their fate would be when reaching man and womanhood. She declared that she had never received “kind treatment.” It was not on this account, however, that she was prompted to escape. She was actuated by a more disinterested motive than this. She was chiefly induced to make the bold effort to save her children from having to drag the chains of Slavery as she herself had done.

- William Still, The Underground Railroad: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narrative, Letters &c. (1871) [full text]

From the same sheet, of May 20th, the terrible doom of Samuel Green, is announced in the following words:

In the case of the State against Sam Green, (free negro) who was tried at the April term of the Circuit Court of this county, for having in his possession abolition pamphlets, among which was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” has been found guilty by the court, and sentenced to the penitentiary for the term of ten years—until the 14th of May, 1867.

- William Still, The Underground Railroad: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narrative, Letters &c. (1871) [full text]

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

- Frederick Douglass, ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Extract from an Oration at Rochester, July 5, 1852’ in My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) [full text]

When I reached the house, I went in directly to Miss Betsey. I found her in great distress; and she cried out as soon as she saw me, “Oh, Mary! my father is going to sell you all to raise money to marry that wicked woman. You are my slaves, and he has no right to sell you; but it is all to please her.”

- Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831) [full text]