Quotes & Sayings About Slavery In The Colonies

The fact of history is that black people have not
probably no people have ever
liberated themselves strictly through their own efforts. In every great change in the lives of African Americans we see the hand of events that were beyond our individual control, events that were not unalloyed goods. You cannot disconnect our emancipation in the Northern colonies from the blood spilled in the Revolutionary War, any more than you can disconnect our emancipation from slavery in the South from the charnel houses of the Civil War, any more than you can disconnect our emancipation from Jim Crow from the genocides of the Second World War. History is not solely in our hands. And still you are called to struggle, not because it assures you victory but because it assures you an honorable and sane life. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. — Thomas Jefferson

There are no parallels to the life of the concentration camps. All seeming parallels create confusion and distract attention from what is essential. Forced labor in prisons and penal colonies, banishment, slavery, all seem for a moment to offer helpful comparisons, but on closer examination lead nowhere. — Hannah Arendt

[T]he Indian deaths were such a severe financial blow to the colonies that...[t]o resupply themselves with labor, the Spaniards began importing slaves from Africa. — Charles C. Mann

In the end, Edwards wrestled with slavery, defending the institution within the colonies but also calling for the end of the Atlantic slave trade. — Richard A. Bailey

Decolonization actually boosted slavery. As foreign powers withdrew from the colonies, people were enslaved by their own countrymen. And we see it in Africa, we see it in Asia. — Loretta Napoleoni