William Goodell Quotes

One hundred years ago the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin…. The negro today asks for justice. We do not answer him—we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil—when we answer “Patience.”

There is not an inn between Washington and Montgomery, a distance of over 1000 miles, that will accommodate me to a bed or a meal. Now then, is there a man on this floor who is so heartless, whose breast is so void of better feelings, as to say that this brutal custom needs no regulation. I hold that it does, and Congress is the body to regulate it.

I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the Southern states. The Negroes may long remain slaves without complaining; but if they are once raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights; and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.

The supporters of freeing the slave were … half savages, negroes and magistrates who … were for the most part people of color and natural sons of Jews by negroes and mulattos, prejudiced against everything American but Negroes and their descendants. Emancipation was an experiment that America should never entertain

What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction . . . that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. . . . If things are allowed to go on as they are, it is certain that slavery is to be abolished. . . . By the time the North shall have attained the power, the black race will be in a large majority, and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything. . . . The consequence will be that our men will be all exterminated or expelled to wander as vagabonds over a hostile Earth, and as for our women, their fate will be too horrible to contemplate even in fancy.

Let Southern oppressors tremble — let their secret abettors tremble — let their Northern apologists tremble — let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble.

African slaves, the substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it.

In the north we could not hope to keep the worst and poorest servant for a single day in the wretched discomfort in which our negro servants are forced habitually to live.

Perhaps most perniciously, neo-Confederates now claim that the South seceded over states' rights. Yet when each state left the Union, its leaders made clear that they were seceding because they were for slavery and against states' rights.

In the combat between the emerging Negroes of the South and the ruling white trash, I sympathize greatly with the Negro.

Amnesia best describes America's official stance regarding slavery

When you educate a negro, you educate a candidate for the penitentiary or spoil a good field hand.

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.

You have no understanding of what it is to live in a community surcharged with an idle, dissolute, vicious, ignorant negro population just emerged from slavery.

For better or for worse, (as in some of the old marriage ceremonies,) the negroes are evidently a permanent part of the American population. They are too numerous and useful to be colonized, and too enduring and self-perpetuating to disappear by natural causes. Here they are, four millions of them, and, for weal or for woe, here they must remain.

The general interest both of the white man and of the negroes requires that he should be kept as near to the condition of slavery as possible’

It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the State [instead of colonizing them]? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites, ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries they have sustained, new provocations, the real distinctions which nature has made, and many other circumstances will divide us into parties and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.

In the South the white men used to call all Black men “boy” until they got to be old enough to call them “uncle.” It was sex-the feat of sexual competition. When they used to get liquored up and talk they would always say, “The schoolroom leads to the bedroom” to justify school segregation.

For people who have been slaves for 150 years doing all the work to be called lazy and shiftless by the man who was sitting on the porch—that is a phenomenon in itself.

American women who know the history of this country will always resent the fact that American men chose to enfranchise Negroes fresh from slavery before enhancing their wives and mothers.

The United States was created for white people …. When a negro has learned to read, he ceases to work.

Negroes are almost too ignorant to eat, scarcely wise enough to breathe, mere existing human machines.

Slavery was a faith-based institution. It was supported by the churches and their ministers who provided a religious and moral justification of the institution.

Equal justice to the South, it is said, requires us to consent to the extension of slavery to new countries [states]. That is to say, inasmuch as you do not object to my taking my hog to Nebraska, therefore I must not object to your taking your slave. Now, I admit this is perfectly logical, if there is no difference between hogs and negroes.

Is Justice to be established by subjecting half of mankind to the will of the other half? Justice, Sir, is blind to colors, and weighs in equal scales the rights of all men whether white or black…. An opportunity is now presented, if not to diminish, at least to prevent the growth of a sin that sits heavy on the soul of every one of us.