“I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from their limbs”

—  Thaddeus Stevens

Statement at the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention (July 1837), quoted in Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (1959) by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 63
1830s
Context: I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from their limbs, and witness the rapture which would excite them in the first dance of their freedom.

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Thaddeus Stevens 19
American politician 1792–1868

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