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Southern Slavery Quotations 

"Whereas Hugh Gwyn hath . . . brought back from Maryland three servants formerly run away . . . the court doth . . . order [that] the first serve out their times with their master according to their indentures, . . . and that [the] third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere." A Virginia Court Decision (1640) from Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (January 1898), vol. 5, no. 3, p. 236.
"The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon connected with terror, when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled, and tossed up to see if I were sound, by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me." Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (London: Printed for and sold by the author, 1790), p. 46.
"I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. . . . I was born near a cross-roads post-office called Hale's Ford, and the year was 1858 or 1859. . . . The earliest impressions I can now recall are of the plantation and the slave quarters-the latter being the part of the plantation where the slaves had their cabins. . . I was born in a typical log cabin, about fourteen by sixteen feet square. In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free. . . .The cabin was not only our living-place, but was also used as the kitchen for the plantation. My mother was the plantation cook. The cabin was without glass windows; it had only openings in the side which let in the light and also the cold, chilly air of winter. There was a door to the cabin-that is, something that was called a door-but the uncertain hinges by which it was hung, and the large cracks in it, to say nothing of the fact that it was too small, made the room a very uncomfortable one." Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (New York: University Books, 1993 [1901]), pp. 1-3.
"Most slaves, whether they lived on small farms or plantations of broad acres, were allowed to cultivate garden plots. They tended their own crops either at the twilight end of the day or on Saturday afternoon or Sundays-practically every owner gave his hands time off for at least part of the weekend. Often the planter would buy fresh vegetables and eggs from his slaves . . . because by so doing he avoided the problem of theft commonly associated with a large plantation garden worked by slaves but for the table of the owner. Many slaves on Saturday would carry their surplus produce to crossroads stores or trading communities and sell or barter their items for money or other goods." From John Boles, Black Southerners, 1619-1866 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1983).
"We had possums and coons to eat sometimes. My father, he generally cooked the coons; he would dress them and stew them and then bake them. My mother would eat them. There were plenty of rabbits too. Sometimes when they had taters, they cooked them with them. I remember one time they had just a little patch of blackhead sugar cane. After the freedom, my mother had a kind of garden, and she planted snap beans and watermelons pretty much every year." Monroe Brackins, from Ronnie C. Tyler and Lawrence R. Murphy, eds. The Slave Narratives of Texas (Austin: Encino Press, 1974), pp. 46-7.
"I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States . . . do order and declare that all persons held as slaves . . . are, and henceforth shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons." January 1, 1863, in The Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Arthur Brooks Lapsley (New York: Putnam, 1905), vol. 6, pp. 227-228.