101 Quotes by Harriet Ann Jacobs

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.

The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition.

There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious.

I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away

Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.

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

When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.

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.