William Wells Brown

We cannot tell the evils that exist in the southern States. Like the painter who stands idle by the side of his picture, waiting for the crowd to go out before lifting the screen from the canvas, for fear of frightening his visitors with the unfinished work, so we must wait and let the future historian complete the picture. I know that, having spent twenty years as a slave, one would suppose that I might relate the evils that I witnessed. And so I might. I might stand here for hours and tell you what I saw, and felt, and know, but now is not the time. The time has passed for devoting ourselves to such a purpose. We need not go out of the free States to see its cruelties. They are all about us. Look at the coloured people of the free States, thrown out of your schools, your churches and your social circles, deprived of their political rights and debarred from those avenues of employment that are necessary to a proper maintenance of themselves and families. We find the degrading influences of slavery all about us. Pennsylvania deprives the black man of the elective franchise, and so does New York, except with a property qualification. In most of the northern States, he is looked upon as something to be knocked and kicked about as they see fit.