Quotes about African Slaves

John McWhorter

Black English is simpler than standard English in some ways; for example, it often gets by with just 'be' and drops 'am,' 'is,' and 'are.' That's because black English arose when adult African slaves learned the language.

Alexander H. Stephens

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

Corrine Brown

Southern states in the confederacy were not ready to give up their fight to secede or give up their way of life, which was made possible in large part through the blood, sweat and tears of African slaves.

Christine MacLeod

English merchants were responsible for shipping over three million slaves (half the total) from Africa to the slave plantations of the Caribbean and southern USA, before their trade's abolition by parliament in 1807

Madison Smartt Bell

Haiti was founded by African slaves who rose against their European masters, had a revolution, and created a new state. There is no other such event in Western history.

Chicago Tribune

If a supposed insurrection in the sparse slave population of Northern Virginia throws the whole South into consternation, what kind of security will that section enjoy when thousands of ship loads of the same incendiary material have been brought from Africa, filling up the southern States? We appeal to the conservative men of the country to say which is the safest and best policy: the Democratic, which is striving to multiply and expand this volcanic element, or the Republican which seeks to limit and circumscribe it, and place it on the way of ultimate extinction.

One of the interesting arguments made against slavery prior to the Civil War was that as the proportion of slaves increased in America in general and the South in particular, the security risk from a slave rebellion increases markedly to the point that it was just too risky. John Brown’s small attempted slave revolt at Harpers Ferry put the entire state of Virginia in a panic and Virginia had relatively few slaves compared with deep South states.

Lewis Tappan

You may imagine the joy manifested by these poor Africans, when they heard one of their own color address them in a friendly manner, and in a language they could comprehend!

Cotton Mather

Besides the other praying and pious meetings which I have been continually serving in our neighborhood, a little after this period a company of poor Negroes, of their own accord, addressed me, for my countenance to a design which they had, of erecting such a meeting for the welfare of their miserable nation, that were servants among us. I allowed their design and went one evening and prayed and preached with them …

This is the first documentary evidence of Negro slaves in Colonial America organizing a Christian religious service. It was a Puritan service in Massachusetts.

African Slaves Quotes