I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters.
Harriet Ann JacobsThe slave child had no thought for the morrow; but there came that blight, which too surely waits on every human being born to be a chattel.
Harriet Ann JacobsCould you have seen that mother clinging to her child, when they fastened the irons upon his wrists; could you have heard her heart-rending groans, and seen her bloodshot eyes wander wildly from face to face, vainly pleading for mercy; could you have witnessed that scene as I saw it, you would exclaim, Slavery is damnable!
Harriet Ann JacobsEvery where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows
Harriet Ann Jacobs