“Do you say that the people of the free state have nothing to do with it, and can do nothing? Would to God this were true! But it is not true. The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South, in that they have not the apology of education or custom.
If the mothers of the free states had all felt as they should, in times past, the sons of the free states would not have been the holders, and, proverbially, the hardest masters of slaves; the sons of the free states would not have connived at the extension of slavery, in our national body; the sons of the free states would not, as they do, trade the souls and bodies of men as an equivalent to money, in their mercantile dealings. There are multitudes of slaves temporarily owned, and sold again, by merchants in northern cities; and shall the whole guilt or obloquy of slavery fall only on the South?
Northern men, northern mothers, northern Christians, have something more to do than denounce their brethren at the South; they have to look to the evil among themselves.”

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Concluding Remarks

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Do you say that the people of the free state have nothing to do with it, and can do nothing? Would to God this were tru…" by Harriet Beecher Stowe?
Harriet Beecher Stowe photo
Harriet Beecher Stowe 87
Abolitionist, author 1811–1896

Related quotes

Harry V. Jaffa photo
Gregory Palamas photo
Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo

“You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed. That has nothing to do with the business of the State.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

Presidential address to the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, Karachi (11 August 1947)

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Barack Obama photo
William C. Davis photo

“So long as the number of slave states was the same as or greater than the number of free states, then in the Senate the South had a check on the government.”

William C. Davis (1946) American historian

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), p. 9

William Blackstone photo

“Nothing therefore is to be more avoided, in a free constitution, than uniting the provinces of a judge and a minister of state.”

Book I, ch. 7 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk1ch7.asp: Of the King's Prerogative.
Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)
Context: In this distinct and separate existence of the judicial power, in a peculiar body of men, nominated indeed, but not removable at pleasure, by the crown, consists one main preservative of the public liberty; which cannot subsist long in any state, unless the administration of common justice be in some degree separated both from the legislative and the also from the executive power. Were it joined with the legislative, the life, liberty, and property of the subject would be in the hands of arbitrary judges, whose decisions would be then regulated only by their own opinions, and not by any fundamental principles of law; which, though legislators may depart from, yet judges are bound to observe. Were it joined with the executive, this union might soon be an overbalance for the legislative. For which reason... effectual care is taken to remove all judicial power out of the hands of the king's privy council; who, as then was evident from recent instances might soon be inclined to pronounce that for law, which was most agreeable to the prince or his officers. Nothing therefore is to be more avoided, in a free constitution, than uniting the provinces of a judge and a minister of state.

Donald Rumsfeld photo

“The natural state of man is to want to be free. To have opportunities. To have choices.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

On Arab Spring, Rumsfeld, that he wasn't surprised by popular uprisings of Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/03/08/rumsfeld.interview/index.html March 9, 2011.
2010s

Jane Jacobs photo

“I was taught that the American's right to be a free individual, not at the mercy of the state, was hard-won and that its price was eternal vigilance, that I too would have to be vigilant.”

Jane Jacobs (1916–2006) American–Canadian journalist, author on urbanism and activist (1916-2006)

Political questionnaire response (1952)
Context: I was taught that the American's right to be a free individual, not at the mercy of the state, was hard-won and that its price was eternal vigilance, that I too would have to be vigilant. I was made to feel that it would be a disgrace to me, as an individual, if I should not value or should give up rights that were dearly bought. I am grateful for that upbringing.

Related topics