Measurer’s

unexpected combination of texts, headnotes, provocations, and class writings

my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage

unveil my face and look at people as they passed

because she thinks she has a right to it

cell

his memory is odious now

I thought to myself that she was a better Christian than I was, if she could entirely forgive him

Northern soil, though I no longer called it free soil

seemed only to increase his irritability and cruelty

gave rise to many impromptu vigilance committees

Worse still, many a husband discovered that his wife had fled from slavery years ago, and as “the child follows the condition of its mother,” the children of his love were liable to be seized and carried into slavery.

reign of terror to the colored population

law

felt that the condition of even the meanest and most ignorant among them was vastly superior to the condition of the most favored slaves in America

I had heard much about the oppression of the poor in Europe

I was treated according to my deportment, without reference to my complexion

to be free to say so

slavery had made me suspicious of every body

I did not look back upon the old place, though I felt that I should never see it again

We could also have told them of a poor, blighted young creature, shut up in a living grave

It had never occurred to Mrs. Flint that slaves could have any feelings

how slavery perverted all the natural feelings of the human hear

I had no trust in thee, O Slavery! Never should I know peace till my children were emancipated with all due formalities of law

I thought more of what I had lost, than of what my brother had gained

that the abolitionists had decoyed him away

Linda dragged through the streets like a common negro

you and the children free.

was made to render them a service

serving my children, I should have been thankful to die

Sometimes I thought God was a compassionate Father, who would forgive my sins for the sake of my sufferings. At other times, it seemed to me there was no justice or mercy in the divine government

blessing to the slave!

another winter

Yet the laws allowed him to be out in the free air, while I, guiltless of crime, was pent up here, as the only means of avoiding the cruelties the laws allowed him to inflict upon me!

Give me liberty, or give me death

Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women

There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious

Talk to American slaveholders as you talk to savages in Africa.

There are thousands, who, like good uncle Fred, are thirsting for the water of life; but the law forbids it, and the churches withhold it. They send the Bible to heathen abroad, and neglect the heathen at home

Try to live according to the word of God, my friends. Your skin is darker than mine; but God judges men by their hearts, not by the color of their skins.” This was strange doctrine from a southern pulpit. It was very offensive to slaveholders.

His text was, “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.”

Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader

No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery

I am going to hell; bury my money with me.

I admit that the black man is inferior. But what is it that makes him so? It is the ignorance in which white men compel him to live; it is the torturing whip that lashes manhood out of him; it is the fierce bloodhounds of the South, and the scarcely less cruel human bloodhounds of the north, who enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. They do the work

become men

exert themselves to become men and women

land of my birth

Reader, I draw no imaginary pictures of southern homes

she is no longer a child

Surely, if you credited one half the truths

fiends who bear the shape of men

He that is willing to be a slave, let him be a slave.

she will stay south as long as her other children are slave

he learned to call on God

I wondered for what wise purpose God was leading me through such thorny paths

mother

O, you happy free women, contrast your New Year’s day with that of the poor bond-woman!

The guilty man put their value into his pocket

rights

Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings

These God-breathing machines

nearly white;

valuable piece of property

this narrative is no fiction

I do it with the hope of arousing conscientious and reflecting women

No; I mean, really, Tom is a good, steady, sensible, pious fellow

species

The negro

the negroes wedging

some juggling play before him

Newfoundland dogs

There is something in the negro which, in a peculiar way, fits him for avocations about one’s person

white

soft bread, sugar, and bottled cider, Captain Delano would have given the whites alone

serving the oldest white no better than the youngest black

SAN DOMINICK

canvas wrapped about that part

decay

freight

white-washed monastery

vapors partly mantling the hull

in view of what humanity is capable

uninhabited

I sound my barbaric yawp

silently brush away flies with my hand

They do not know how immortal, but I know

I do not know what it is any more than he

And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,

There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

talkers were talking

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems

I shall not let it.

with original energy

summer grass

what is deep is holy

Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles

Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare

American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also

My giant goes with me wherever I go

The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar

revolution

our young men

we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us.

We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each othe

Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it

we

cause

This is the ultimate fac

with God

he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage

A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me

I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency

do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment

Why drag about this corpse of your memor

dead Bible-society

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think

Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions

the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against i

Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater

But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness

advancing on Chaos and the Dark

not cowards fleeing before a revolution

divine providence has found for you

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards

no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to til

take with shame our own opinion from another

The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain

original

they never hear a thunderstorm of a summer afternoon

The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit

It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related

yoke of matrimon

patriarchs

but showed an hereditary disposition to attend to anything else but his business

the more important concerns of the election

haunted by strange beings

He was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province

There was a drop of comfort

they’ve

In place of these, a lean fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens—elections—members of congress—Bunker’s Hill—heroes of seventy-six—and other words, which were a perfect jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle

the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges

There stood the Catskill Mountains

A troop of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him

the morning was passing away

no traces of such opening remained

naturally a thirsty soul,

presented

there was something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown that inspired awe and checked familiarity

Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance

terrors of Dame Van Winkle.

patriarch

sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had taken place

sages, philosophers

matrimony

If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentmen

profitable labor

told them long stories

simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient

country was yet a province of Great Britain

noble height, and lording it

stereotypical character tropes

every action they both take

It doesn’t even pass the bechdel test

she miraculously revives him

The first would be

it becomes nearly impossible for some to see the truth

inherent brutality

context

elevating

savagery

unquestionable

unsuspecting

prescribes

Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord”

Affliction I wanted,

sleeping mine eyes are weeping.

in carrying of us through so many difficulties

benevolence

tender-hearted and compassionate Christians

horrible pit

hem but the heavens and under them but the earth

for which they rewarded him many fold

received one of our children, we hastened toward the other

thy Work shall be rewarded,

we thought we would ride toward the eastward, to see if we could hear anything concerning our children

heathen in the wilderness from among all Christians

oston gentlemen, and Mrs. Usher, whose bounty and religious charity, I would not forget to make mention of

The twenty pounds, the price of my redemption

In that poor, and distressed, and beggarly condition I was received in

Christian

I should come away in the midst of so many hundreds of enemies quietly and peaceably

I have been in the midst of those roaring lions, and savage bears, that feared neither God, nor man, nor the devil, by night and day

providence

heathen

black faces)

not one week passed without the fury of the enemy, and some desolation by fire and sword upon one place or other

wonderful power of God in providing for such a vast number of our enemies in the wilderness

The chief and commonest food was ground nuts