Frosty Stuff

V. THE TRIALS OF GIRLHOOD. DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family, I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress. Though this seemed to me no more than right, I was grateful for it, and tried to merit the kindness by the faithful discharge of my duties. 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 tried to treat them with indifference or contempt. The master's age, my extreme youth, and the fear that his conduct would be reported to my grandmother, made him bear this treatment for many months. He was a crafty man, and resorted to many means to accomplish his purposes. Sometimes he had stormy, terrific ways, that made his victims tremble; sometimes he assumed a gentleness that he thought must surely subdue. Of the two, I preferred his stormy moods, although they left me trembling. He t...

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows,...

Mr. Editor—I am happy to learn that the sentiments of some of my Trenton brethren are in accordance with my own, in regard to our locating in Mexico and Upper Canada; for in my humble opinion, one thing is needful for us as a people, even emigration; but not to Africa, nor to place ourselves as a distinct people anywhere, but to attach ourselves to a nation already established. The government of these United States is not the only one in this hemisphere that offers equal rights to men; but there are others under whose protection we may safely reside, and where our rights will not be continually trampled upon, on that account. We profess to be republicans, and such I hope we are; but wherein do we show our republican spirit, by sitting still and sighing for that liberty our white brethren tell us we shall never obtain, or in hoping that in some fifty or a hundred years hence, our children’s children will be made free? I think we do not evince republicanism by this conduct, but verily be...

Thomas L. Jennings, Letter in Freedom’s Journal , April 4, 1828 “Our claims are on America; it is the land that gave us birth. We know no other country. It is a land in which our fathers have suffered and toiled. They have watered it with their tears and fanned it with their sighs. Our relation with Africa is the same as the white man’s is with Europe. We have passed through several generations in this country and consequently we have become naturalized. Our habits, our manners, our passions, our dispositions have become the same. The same mother’s milk has nourished us both in infancy; the white child and the colored have both hung on the same breast. I might as well tell the white man about England, France or Spain, the country from whence his forefathers emigrated, and call him a European, as for him to call us Africans. Africa is as foreign to us as Europe is to them.” “A Subscriber,” Letter in The Liberator , September 4, 1831 “To the Editor: The term ‘colored’ Is not a good one. ...