"Abolitionist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... effect upon the brute—the more so that the boys now laughed at him. These boys were not all bad. They were incensed against me as an Abolitionist—or "nigger-stealer," as they phrased it—and, under the countenance and guidance of their elders, their worst passions were now at play; but for all that, they were not essentially wicked. They were rough backwoods' boys, and the spirit ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... incendiaries (Giddings and Hale) threw firebrands yesterday into the two houses of Congress. The western abolitionist moved a resolution of inquiry into the transactions now passing in Washington, which brought on a fierce and fiery debate on the part of the southern members, in the course of which Mr. Giddings was compelled to confess, on the cross-questioning ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... would prove an able auxiliary to abolition; but when the society declared its unalterable purpose to adhere to its original position of neutrality, they withdrew their support, and commenced hostilities against it. "The Anti-Slavery Society," said a distinguished abolitionist, "began with a declaration of war against the Colonization Society."[9] This feeling of hostility was greatly increased by the action of the abolitionists of England. The doctrine of "Immediate, not Gradual Abolition," was announced by them as their creed; and the anti-slavery ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the centre of the Abolitionist movement in New York State and for many years before the Civil War it was a busy station on the "Underground railroad," by which fugitive slaves were assisted in escaping to Canada. The fervor of the movement gave prominence ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... political and economic point of view. The negro will never disturb this country again. The worst that is to be apprehended from him is now: he may revolt and cause more destruction than any Northern man, except it be the ultra-abolitionist, wants to see. A Northern army may be required in the next ninety days to go South to suppress a negro insurrection. As much as the South have vilified the North, that army would go on such a mission and ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... considered the negro his equal, he answered: "In the right to eat the bread which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." He was not an abolitionist, and declared more than once that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists," that he had "no lawful right to do so," but only to prohibit it in "any new country which is not already cursed ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... "ass," as applied to a human being, is not current in good literature, unless low comedy be entitled to that position, and coming from Hawthorne, of all writers, it seems like an oath from the mouth of a woman. Tupper, who was quite proud of his philanthropy, was also much of an abolitionist, and he may have trodden on Hawthorne's metaphysical toes half a dozen times, without being aware of what he was doing. Altogether, it seems like rather an ill return for Tupper's hospitality; but Hawthorne himself did not intend it for publication, and on the whole one ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Boucher was, however, so moved by the spirit of uplift of the downtrodden that he takes front rank among those who, in emphasizing the rights of servants, caused a decided change in the attitude of white men toward the improvement of Negroes. Boucher was not an immediate abolitionist. He abhorred slavery, however, to the extent that he asserted that if ever the colonies would be improved to their utmost capacity, an essential part of that amelioration had to be the abolition of slavery. His chief concern then was the cultivation ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... there, but he had unexpectedly come upon the other fugitives, and, even though the encounter had cost the life of his henchman, Carver, it also resulted in the death of two men who had come between him and his prey—the negro, and the abolitionist. The scene cleared in my brain and became vivid and real. I could almost picture in detail each act of the grim tragedy. The two revengeful trackers—if there were only two engaged, for others might have been recruited on the steamer—must have crept up to the ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... has made the laws, and denied the slaves legislative protection. Public opinion has knotted the lash, heated the branding-iron, loaded the rifle, and shielded the murderer. Public opinion threatens the abolitionist with death, if he venture to the South; and drags him with a rope about his middle, in broad unblushing noon, through the first city in the East. Public opinion has, within a few years, burned a slave alive at a slow fire in the city of St. ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... the head of one of the families came forward and stated that Mr. McKee, the Pastor of the Wesleyan Church, had gone to the Conference, and hence they were without services for a few Sabbaths. But as for his part, he did not care if he never came back, for I was abolitionist ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... English public opinion, in this most vital matter of her time. She was guided not merely by humanitarian disgust at the cruel and brutal abominations of slavery,—though we know no reason why this alone should not be a sufficient ground for turning Abolitionist,—but also on the more purely political ground of the cowardice, silence, corruption, and hypocrisy that were engendered in the Free States by purchased connivance at the peculiar institution of the Slave States. Nobody has yet traced out ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... speech in which he said that a demand had been made for arms seized in Indiana (as Col. Walker had proposed to do), and if the demand failed, the revolution would be begun in Indiana "as sure as there was a God in heaven or an abolitionist ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... to signalize their triumph, the slaveholders set on the Covington mob to attack Mr. Babb, reporter for one of the Cincinnati papers, on the charge of being an abolitionist, and that gentleman was knocked down, kicked, trampled on, and would undoubtedly have been murdered, but for the interference of some of ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... immediately after this, that "it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil." For no Abolitionist ever branded the slave-system ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... have talked all day and all night, for days together, to any officer who could instruct him, until his companion, at least, fell asleep exhausted. His comprehension of the whole problem of Slavery was more thorough and far-reaching than that of any Abolitionist, so far as its social and military aspects went; in that direction I could teach him nothing, and he taught me much. But it was his methods of thought which always impressed me chiefly: superficial brilliancy he left to others, and grasped at the solid truth. Of course his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... one of their meetings it was resolved: "That we will afford protection to no abolitionist as a settler of this country." "That we recognize the institution of slavery as already existing in this territory, and advise stockholders to introduce their property as ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... day, and he had muttered out something about its being "the life of the dog, Ma'am." She wondered what he meant by that! She looked over at his bearish figure, snuff-drabbled waistcoat, and shock of black hair. Well, poor man, he could not help it, if he were coarse, and an Abolitionist, and a Fourierite, and——She was getting a little muddy now, she was conscious, so turned her mind back to the repose of her stocking. Margret took it very quietly, seeing her father flaming so. But Margret never had any opinions to express. She was ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... have a common interest as well as a common history. The blood that was mingled at Yorktown and at Eutaw cannot be kept at enmity forever. The Whigs of Bunker Hill are the same as the Whigs of Georgia." Mr. Toombs was actually charged in this campaign with being an Abolitionist. He was accused of saying in a speech at Mallorysville, Ga., during the Harrison campaign, that slavery was "a moral and political evil." This was now brought up against him. Mr. Toombs admitted saying that slavery was a political ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... born in Missouri. My dislike for the Northern scum was inherent. This was shown, at an early age, in the extreme distaste I exhibited for Webster's spelling-book,—the work of a well-known Eastern Abolitionist. I cannot be too grateful for the consideration shown by my chivalrous father,—a gentleman of the old school,—who resisted to the last an attempt to introduce Mitchell's Astronomy and Geography into the public school of our district. When ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... woman was publicly burned to death in Boston. The first Abolition paper was published in Tennessee by Embree. Benjamin Lundy, his successor, could not find a single Abolitionist in Boston. In 1828 over half the people of Tennessee favoured Abolition. At this time there were one hundred and forty Abolition Societies in America—one hundred and three in the South, and not one in Massachusetts. It was not ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... the iniquitous abuses to which it so often gives rise—the tortures, vengeances, murders, and fiendish punishments, which in their turn follow the crime—are portrayed with striking truthfulness and real power. The author is evidently no Abolitionist on hear-say—the whole poem gives evidence of practical familiarity with 'the institution,' and the sense of truth has inspired his pen in many passages with wonderful power. The terrible sufferings of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... course, the mass of the Republican leaders entirely ignored the book, yet a considerable number of Anti-Slavery men, with more transcendental ideas, were decidedly "sold." The machinery employed was exceedingly ingenious. Before the book was published, proof-copies were furnished to every prominent abolitionist in the country, and also to prominent spiritual mediums, to ladies known to wear Bloomers, and to all that portion of our population who are supposed to be a little "soft" on the subject of reform. A circular was ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... stated that the influence of Maria White made Lowell an Abolitionist, but this is only qualifiedly true. A year before he had met her he wrote to a friend: "The Abolitionists are the only ones with whom I sympathize of the present extant parties." Freedom, justice, humanitarianism were fundamental ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the soldiers, in a spirit of mischief, called for a rope to hang him; he thought himself lost, and through his tears he begged for mercy, pleaded for compassion, and promised atonement. General Bonham riding up at this juncture of the soldiers' sport, and seeing the abject fear of the old Northern Abolitionist, took pity and showed his sympathy by telling the men to turn him loose, and not to interfere with non-combatants. He was told to run now, and if he kept the gait he started with through the woods, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... of the Presbyterians answers a question that may be properly asked of the creed-abolitionist; namely, What bond is left to hold a religious community together? The bond, in their case, simply was voluntary adhesion and custom. A religious community may hold together, like a political party, with only a vague tacit understanding. When a body is once formed, it has an outward cohesion, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... near Haverhill, Massachusetts, December 17, 1807. He was educated in the public school, working at the same time on his father's farm or at making shoes. Having left the academy, he devoted himself to literature. He was an ardent abolitionist, and many of his poems are written to aid the cause of freedom in which he was so deeply interested. His best-known poems are "Snow-Bound," "Barbara Frietchie," "Maude Muller," and "Voices of ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... and secular journals of the country in reference to the life and work of this great and good man, but I desire to say a few words in regard to his connection with the anti-slavery movement, and his interest in the work of the American Missionary Association. He was an original Abolitionist, and one of the most pronounced even in the early years of the agitation in his opposition to the wickedness of slavery, and in later years the cause of the elevation of the freedman had no stronger nor better friend ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 3, July, 1900 • Various
... would have been disposed to assent at this stage of the struggle. By most persons it was thought reasonable, on national grounds, that the theory of dispersion should be tried, wherever it might inflict no peculiar caste or moral stain. Mr. Sharland, a strenuous abolitionist, prepared a series of resolutions against the new form of convictism. The governor promised to support them in the nominee council, and they passed unanimously (October, 1848). The first totally objected to ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... your list of political parties, examine the candidates, and put me where I belong. This is a question that must come into politics, as all reforms come through the ballot-box, and I must give my influence to that political party or power making this a clear-cut issue. I am an Abolitionist." ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... colonies, and in May, 1830, a great meeting was held in London to demand, not the mitigation, but the total abolition of slavery in every land over which the flag of England floated. This meeting was presided over by the great abolitionist, William Wilberforce, who had been out of public life for some time owing to severe ill-health, and who believed that he could not more fitly celebrate his return to the active work of philanthropy than by taking ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... will, out of perversity, if not common charity; for some of these people think that because I'm an abolitionist I am also a heathen, and I should rather like to show them, that, though I cannot quite love my enemies, I am willing to ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... Kansas in a public meeting. The professors and tutors naturally followed in the train of the president, while a majority of the sons of wealthy men among the undergraduates always took the southern side. The son of an abolitionist who wished to go through Harvard in those days found it a penitential pilgrimage. He was certain to suffer an extra amount of hazing, and to endure a kind of ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... sure that you do not drop her anywhere along the coast of my own state of Kentucky; for if you do, she will untie the sack and swim ashore into my constituency, where I have trouble enough without the Countess St. Auban, active abolitionist, to increase it. Trouble '—said he to me—'thy name is ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... ethics and economics, I was still responsible for him as a guest. It was as if an English gentleman had introduced a blatant American Democrat into Tory society; or, rather, as if a Southerner of the olden time had harbored a Northern Abolitionist and permitted him to inquire into the workings of slavery among his neighbors. People would tolerate him as my guest for a time, but there must be an end of their patience with the tacit enmity of his sentiments and the explicit vulgarity of his ideals, and when ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... you hound of a abolitionist!" shouted a brutal voice; "we're about ready fur ye!" Penn's hand drew back. I dare say it trembled, I dare say his face turned white again, as he felt the danger so near. How could he confront, with his sensitive ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... an Abolitionist, not even what would be called anti-slavery, but I try to judge fairly and honestly, and it became patent to my mind early in the rebellion that the North and South could never live at peace with each other except as one nation, and that without slavery. As anxious as I am to see ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... long as Kansas remains a Territory; and, when, by all these foul means, it seeks to come into the Union as a slave State, I shall oppose it.... You inquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I am a Whig; but others say there are no Whigs, and that I am an Abolitionist. When I was in Washington I voted for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times, and I never heard of any attempt to unwhig me for that. I now do no more than oppose the extension of slavery. I am not a Know-Nothing—that is certain. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... is told about Wendell Phillips—a story that must have made even the serious-minded Abolitionist laugh heartily: He was in a hotel in Charleston, had breakfast in his room, and was served by a slave. Mr. Phillips spoke to him as an Abolitionist, but the waiter seemed to be more concerned about the breakfast than about himself. Finally Mr. Phillips told him to go away, saying that he could ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... Whitney's statue of Harriet Martineau had watched the stream of American girlhood flow through "the Center" and surge around the palms for twenty-eight years. The statue was originally made at the request of Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman, the well-known abolitionist and dear friend of Miss Martineau; but after Mrs. Chapman's death, it was Miss Whitney's to dispose of, and, representing as it did her ideal modern woman, she gave it in 1886 to Wellesley, where modern womanhood was in the making. In ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... from his sacred lips that could be construed into a condemnation of that institution which had existed from the early ages of the world, existed then, and is continued now. The application made by the Abolitionist of the golden rule is absurd: it might then apply to the child, who would have his father no longer control him; to the apprentice, who would no longer that the man to whom he is bound should have a right to ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... majority of the people a profoundly serious matter. With every discussion it became more vital. Indeed, in the first debate, which was opened and closed by Douglas, the relation of the two speakers became dramatic. It was here that Douglas hoping to fasten on Lincoln the stigma of "abolitionist," charged him with having undertaken to abolitionize the old Whig party, and having been in 1854 a subscriber to a radical platform proclaimed at Springfield. This platform Douglas read. Lincoln, when he replied, could only say he was never at the ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Boston and from there went up the North Shore. This was my first visit to Boston and it was here that I met Miss Susan D. Messinger and her brother William S. Messinger. Their home was at 81 Walnut Avenue, Roxbury, Mass. Miss Messinger had been an abolitionist. Both she and her brother were deeply interested in the welfare of my people. They listened attentively to my story and from that ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards |
