Runaway Slave Quotes & Sayings

I looked across into the uninviting distance and once again came to me the question, 'Have I the soul of a slave or the soul of a free man?' Then with clearness I realized that if I had the soul of a slave, I should give up, lie down in the desert and die, a fitting end for a runaway slave. "But if I had the soul of a free man, what then? Surely I would force my way back to Babylon, repay the people who had trusted me, bring happiness to my wife who had cared for me, bring peace and contentment to my parents. — George S. Clason

A free man is not a slave who has escaped his master; such a man is but a runaway slave who may be caught and returned to servitude. A free man, though he may be overpowered, may be killed, cannot be reduced to servitude; something in him asserts freedom as an inviolable right.
It is not negotiable.
He does not *ask* that others respect his right, he *requires* it; and it is ultimately his willingness to die for this freedom which forms the basis of his demand that others respect it. — Allen Wheelis

A man in chains need not be a slave. If he has pride and self-respect he is a free man though a prisoner, and a constant danger to his jailers. Conversely, a slave who escapes is not a free man, but a runaway slave who may be caught and returned to servitude. A slave is one who accepts the identity ascribed to him by a master: You are an inferior and unworthy person and so will remain, and therefore must serve me with obedience and humility. — Allen Wheelis

Susan Boggs, a black runaway interviewed in Canada in 1863, said of the religious slave masters: 'Why the man that baptized me had a colored woman tied up in his yard to whip when he got home that very Sunday and her mother ... was in church hearing him preach. He preached, You must obey your masters and be good servants.- That is the greater part of the sermon, when they preach to the colored folks ... ' — Gerry Spence

We are runaway slaves from our own past, and only by turning to face the hounds can we find our freedom beyond them. — Timothy B. Tyson

Accepting Uncle Tom's Cabin as revelation second only to the Bible, the Yankee women all wanted to know about the bloodhounds which every Southerner kept to track down runaway slaves. And they never believed her when she told them she had only seen one bloodhound in all her life and it was a small mild dog and not a huge ferocious mastiff. They wanted to know about the dreadful branding irons which planters used to mark the faces of their slaves and the cat-o'-nine-tails with which they beat them to death, and they evidenced what Scarlett felt was a very nasty and ill-bred interest in slave concubinage.
Especially did she resent this in view of the enormous increase in mulatto babies in Atlanta since the Yankee soldiers had settled in the town. — Margaret Mitchell

You said you left Mississippi in 1854," Ron says. He turns to Mamuwalde and asks "Were you a runaway slave?"
"Not at all," Cindy Lou answers. "Daddy freed him."
Ron's jaw almost hits the floor. His wine glass does. — Daven Anderson

My mother is bold in her caused," George said. "We have never had a runaway slave come to our door, but I too would help him. My mother and I were forced to leave North Carolina when we freed our slaves. The anger our former neighbors and friends turned on us told us much. When a person does what is right, it stirs the rage of those who will not turn from doing the same evil. — Lyn Cote

A slave was, in Greek or Roman eyes, absolutely limited as to the consideration anyone (even a god) could show for him. Even if freed, he would always be treated as a social, civic, and spiritual inferior. A runaway had no right to any consideration at all. Deploying Christian ideas against Greco-Roman culture, Paul joyfully mocks the notion that any person placing himself in the hands of God can be limited or degraded in any way that matters. The letter must represent the most fun anyone ever had writing while incarcerated. The letter to Philemon may be the most explicit demonstration of how, more than anyone else, Paul created the Western individual human being, unconditionally precious to God and therefore entitled to the consideration of other human beings. — Sarah Ruden

Frederick Douglass, a former slave, witnessed and described that exact phenomenon among his fellow slaves, many of whom were proud of how hard they worked for their masters and how faithfully they did as they were told. From their perspective, a runaway slave was a shameful thief, having "stolen" himself from the master. — Larken Rose