(1)
“But never yet could I
find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration;
never see even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than
the whites with accurate ears for tune and time…Misery is often the parent of
the most affecting touches in poetry. –
Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry.”
Author: Thomas
Jefferson
Text: Notes on the State of Virginia
(2)
“[D]id I consider myself
an European, I might say my sufferings were great; but when I compare my lot
with that of most of my countrymen, I regard myself as a particular favorite
of heaven, and acknowledge the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of
my life.”
Author: Olaudah
Equiano
Text: The Interesting Narrative of the
Life of Olaudah Equiano
(3)
“Yes, ye lordly, ye
haughty sex, our souls are by nature equal to yours; the same breath of God
animates, enlivens, and invigorates us; and that we are not fallen lower than
yourselves, let those witness who have greatly towered above the various
discouragements by which they have been so heavily oppressed…”
Author: Judith
Sargent Murray
Text: ‘On the Equality of the Sexes’
(4)
“And I have learned
that probity, virtue, honour, though they should not have received the polish
of Europe, will secure to an honest American the good graces of his fair
countrywomen, and I hope, the applause of THE PUBLIC.”
Author: Royall
Tyler
Text: ‘The Contrast’
(5)
“We have listened too
long to the courtly muses of Europe.
The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid,
imitative, tame. Public and private
avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat.
The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic
consequence. The mind of this country,
taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no work for any but the decorous and complaisant.”
Author: Ralph
Waldo Emerson
Text: ‘The American Scholar’
(6)
“Yes, madam, your Eliza
has fallen; fallen, indeed! She has
become the victim of her own indiscretion, and of the intrigue and artifice of
a designing libertine, who is the husband of another!”
Author: Hannah
Webster Foster
Text: The Coquette
(7)
“The authority of
government, even such as I am willing to submit to, -- for I will cheerfully
obey those who know or can do better than I, and in many things even those who
neither know nor can do so well, -- is still an impure one: to be strictly
just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and
property but what I concede to it.”
Author: Henry
David Thoreau
Text
(proper name): ‘Resistance to Civil Government’
(8)
“Has Mr. Jefferson
declared to the world, that we are inferior to the whites, both in the
endowments of our bodies and of minds?
It is indeed surprising, that a man of such great learning, combined
with such excellent natural parts, should speak so of a set of men in chains,”
Author: David
Walker
Text: ‘Appeal
to the Colored People of the World’
(9)
“I am aware that many
object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for
severity? I will be as harsh as
truth, and as uncompromising as justice.
On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with
moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a
moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the
ravisher; tell the mother to gently extricate her babe from the fire into which
it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the
present. I am in earnest – I will not
equivocate – I will not excuse – I will not retreat a single inch – AND I WILL
BE HEARD.”
Author: William
Lloyd Garrison
Name of author’s major newspaper: The Liberator
(10)
“What, to the American
slave, is your 4th of July?
I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the
year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham…”
Author: Frederick
Douglass
Text: ‘What
to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’
(11)
“When there was a
momentary calm in that tempestuous sea of sound, the leader gave the sign, the
procession resumed its march. On they
went, like fiends that throng in mockery round some dead potentate, mighty no more,
but majestic still in his agony. On
they went, in counterfeited pomp, in senseless uproar, in frenzied merriment,
trampling on an old man’s heart. On
swept the multitude, and left a silent street behind.
‘Well,
Robin, are you dreaming?’ inquired the gentleman…”
Author: Nathaniel
Hawthorne
Text: ‘My Kinsman, Major Molineaux’
(12)
“There was blood on her
white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her
emaciated frame. For a moment she
remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold, then, with a low
moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her
violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a
victim of the terrors he had anticipated.”
Author: Edgar
Allan Poe
Text: ‘The
Fall of the House of Usher’
(13)
“As to Claggart, the
monomania in the man – if that indeed it were – as involuntarily disclosed by
starts in the manifestations detailed, yet in general covered over by his
self-contained and rational demeanor…”
Author: Herman
Melville
Text: Billy
Budd
(14)
“There was never any
more inception than there is now,
Never
any more youth or age than there is now;
And
will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor
any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge
and urge and urge,
Always
the procreant urge of the world.”
Author: Walt
Whitman
Text: ‘Song of Myself’
(15)
“O powerful western
fallen star!
O
shades of night! -- O moody, tearful
night!
O
great star disappear’d – O the black murk that hides the star!
Author: Walt
Whitman
Text: ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard
Bloomed’
(16)
“Tell me not, in
mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! –
For
the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life
is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust
thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Author: Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow
Text: ‘A Psalm of Life’
(17)
“The voice of
Massachusetts! Of her free sons and
daughters,
Deep
calling unto deep aloud, the sound of many waters!
Against
the burden of that voice what tyrant power shall stand?
No
fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon
her land!
Look
to it well, Virginians! In calmness we
have borne,
In
answer to our faith and trust, your insult and your scorn;
You’ve
spurned our kindest counsels; you’ve hunted for our lives;
And
shaken round our hearths and homes your manacles and
gyves!”
Author: John
Greenleaf Whittier
Text: ‘From Massachusetts to Virginia’
(18)
“1. Read then on the subject of slavery. …
2. Pray over this subject. …
3. Speak on this subject. …
4. Act on this subject. …
Author: Angelina
Grimke
Text: Appeal to the Christian Women of
the South
(19)
“In the following pages
I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and
have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest
himself of prejudice and prepossession…”
Author: Thomas
Paine
Text: Common
Sense
(20)
“The wrath of God burns
against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the flame
is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now
rage and glow. The glittering sword is
whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under them.”
Author: Jonathan
Edwards
Text: ‘Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God’
(21)
“By this time I had
just begun to Read in the New Testament without Spelling, -- and I had a
Stronger Desire Still to Learn to read the Word of God, and at the Same Time
had an uncommon Pity and Compassion to my Poor Brethren According to the
Flesh. I used to wish I was capable of
Instructing my poor Kindred. I used to
think, if I Could once Learn to Read I would Instruct the poor Children in
Reading, -- and used frequently to talk with our Indians Concerning Religion.”
Author: Samuel
Occom
Text: A
Short Narrative of My Life
(22)
“Tho’ I seldom attended
any Public Worship, I had still an Opinion of its Propriety, and of its Utility
when rightly conducted, and I regularly paid my annual Subscription for the
Support of the only Presbyterian Minister or Meeting we had in
Philadelphia….But his Discourses were chiefly either polemic Arguments, or
Explications of the peculiar Doctrines of our Sect, and were all to me very
dry, uninteresting and unedifying, since not a single moral Principle was
inculcated or enforc’d their Aim seeming to be rather to make us Presbyterians
than good Citizens.”
Author: Benjamin
Franklin
Text: Autobiography
(23)
“They recalled the
fresh young image of the Handsome Sailor, that face never deformed by a sneer
or subtler vile freak of the heart within.
This impression of him was doubtless deepened by the fact that he was
gone…”
Author: Herman
Melville
Text: Billy
Budd
(24)
“Swooning, I staggered
to the opposite wall. For one instant
the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and
of awe. In the next, a dozen stout arms
were toiling at the wall. It fell
bodily. The corpse, already greatly
decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the
spectators. Upon its head, with red
extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had
seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the
hangman. I had walled the monster
within the tomb!”
Author: Edgar
Allan Poe
Text: ‘The
Black Cat’
(25)
“There is a time in
every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance;
that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as
his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing
corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which
is given to him to till. The power
which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what this is which
he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”
Author: Ralph
Waldo Emerson
Text: ‘Self-Reliance’