Harriet Ann Jacobs

If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year.

The war of my life had begun; and though one of God's most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered.

No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.

But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import

I would rather drudge out my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress.

Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.

If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.

Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous creatures as little as I do the other.

I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away

There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment.