Fugitive Slave Act

Famous quotes containing the words fugitive slave, fugitive, slave and/or act:

    “Is this what all these soldiers, all this training, have been for these seventy-nine years past? Have they been trained merely to rob Mexico and carry back fugitive slaves to their masters?”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “Perfect Scepticisme ... is a disease incurable, and a thing rather to be pitied or laughed at, then seriously opposed. For when a man is so fugitive and unsettled that he will not stand to the verdict of his own Faculties, one can no more fasten any thing upon him, than he can write in the water, or tye knots in the wind.”
    —Henry More (1614–1687)

    “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.”
    —Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    “My dream thou brok’st not, but continued’st it.
    Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice
    To make dreams truths and fables histories;
    Enter these arms, for since thou thought’st it best
    Not to dream all my dream, let’s act the rest.”
    —John Donne (1572–1631)