9 Quotes by Harriet Beecher Stowe about slavery


  • Author Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • Quote

    Mary! Mary! My dear, let me reason with you.I hate reasoning, John,—especially reasoning on such subjects. There's a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing; and you don't believe in it yourselves, when it comes to practice. I know you well enough, John. You don't believe it's right any more than I do; and you wouldn't do it any sooner than I.

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  • Author Harriet Beecher Stowe
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    Well," said St. Clare, "suppose that something shoul bring down the price of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a drug in the market, don't you think we should soon have another version of the Scripture doctrine? What flood of light would pour the church, all at once, and immediately it would be discovered that everything in the bible and reason went the other way.

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  • Author Harriet Beecher Stowe
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    One should have expected some terrible enormities charged to those who are excluded from heaven, as the reason; but no,—they are condemned for not doing positive good, as if that included every possible harm.

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  • Author Harriet Beecher Stowe
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    The benevolent gentleman is sorry; but, then, the thing happens every day! One sees girls and mothers crying at these sales, always! it can't be helped, etc.; and he walks off, with his acquisition, in another direction.

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  • Author Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • Quote

    It is with the oppressed, enslaved, African race that I cast in my lot; and if I wished anything, I would wish myself two shades darker, rather than one lighter.

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  • Author Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • Quote

    He says that there can be no high civilization without enslavement of the masses, either nominal or real. There must, he says, be a lower class, given up to physical toil and confined to an animal nature; and a higher one thereby acquires leisure and wealth for a more expanded intelligence and improvement, and becomes the directing soul of the lower. So he reasons, because, as I said, he is born an aristocrat;—so I don't believe, because I was born a democrat.

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