"This is called 'the land of the free and the home of the brave'; it is called the 'asylum of the oppressed,' and some have been foolish enough to call it the 'Cradle of Liberty.' If it is the 'Cradle of Liberty,' they have rocked the child to death."
"This is emphatically an age of discoveries; but I will venture the assertion, that none but an American slaveholder could have discovered that a man born in a country was not a citizen of it."
12 likes
Source: William Wells Brown (2012). “The Narrative of William Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave”, p.16, Simon and Schuster
About the author
Same author
More quotes by William Wells Brown
"The duty I owe to the slave, to truth, and to God, demands that I should use my pen and tongue so long as life and health are vouchsafed to me to employ them, or until the last chain shall fall from the limbs of the last slave in America and the world."
"I was not only hunting for my liberty, but also hunting for my name."
"The last great struggle for our rights; the battle for our own civilization, is entirely with ourselves, and the problem is to be solved by us."
"All I demand for the black man is, that the white people shall take their heels off his neck, and let him have a chance to rise by his own efforts."
"Though slavery is thought, by some, to be mild in Missouri, when compared with the cotton, sugar and rice growing states, yet no part of our slave-holding country is more noted for the barbarity of its inhabitants than St. Louis."