It [slavery] has exercised absolute mastery over the American Church. . . . With the Bible in their hands, her priesthood have attempted to prove that slavery came down from God out of heaven. They have become slaveholders and dealers in human flesh.
William Lloyd Garrison (Journalist, 1805 – 1879)
Better to be always in a minority of one with God – branded as madman, incendiary, fanatic, heretic, infidel – frowned upon by “the powers that be,” and mobbed by the populace – or consigned ignominiously to the gallows, like him whose “soul is marching on,” though his “body lies mouldering in the grave,” or burnt to ashes at the stake like Wickliffe, or nailed to the cross like him who “gave himself for the world,” – in defence of the RIGHT, than like Herod, having the shouts of a multitude crying, “It is the voice of a god, and not of a man!”
William Lloyd Garrison (Journalist, 1805 – 1879)
What shall be said, then, of those who insist upon ignoring the question of slavery as not involved in this deadly feud, and maintain that the only issue is, the support of the government and the preservation of the Union? Surely, they are “fools and blind”; for it is slaveholders alone who have conspired to seize the one, and overturn the other. As long as the enslavement of a single human being is sanctioned in the land, the curse of God will rest upon it.
William Lloyd Garrison (Journalist, 1805 – 1879)
My crime is that I will not go with the multitude to do evil. My singularity is that when I say that freedom is of God and slavery is of the devil, I mean just what I say. My fanaticism is that I insist on the American people abolishing slavery, or ceasing to prate on the rights of man.
William Lloyd Garrison (Journalist, 1805 – 1879)
Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.
William Lloyd Garrison (Journalist, 1805 – 1879)
The man who, for party, forsakes righteousness, goes down; and the armed battalions of God march over him.
Wendell Phillips (Lawyer, 1811 – 1884)
The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.
Wendell Phillips (Lawyer, 1811 – 1884)
God gives manhood but one clue to success,–utter and exact justice; that he guarantees shall be always expediency.
Wendell Phillips (Lawyer, 1811- 1884)
The Puritan did not stop to think; he recognized God in his soul, and acted.
Wendell Phillips (Lawyer, 1811 – 1884)
The paleontological evidence before us today clearly demonstrates ordered progressive change with the successive development of new faunal and floral assemblages through the changing epochs of our earth’s history. There should be no real conflict between science, which is the search for truth, and Christ’s teachings, which I hold to be truth itself. It is only when scientists remove God from creation that the Christian is faced with an irreconcilable situation.
Wendell Phillips (Lawyer, 1811 – 1884)