Catherine Clinton > Quotes

“I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.”40”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“If you are tired, keep going; if you are scared, keep going; if you are hungry, keep going; if you want to taste freedom, keep going.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Of course, in these racial passion plays, though the “good guys” might have been either black or white, the villains were nearly always white. It was tricky for the majority of blacks during the antebellum era to separate friend from foe. As one African American confided: “They [whites] was all . . . devils and good people walking in the road at the same time, and nobody could tell one from t’other.”4”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“The free black community, especially in the border states, steadily increased at the turn of the nineteenth century. No black population grew more dramatically during the early years of the republic than Maryland’s. Its free people of color made up the second largest free black population in 1790—and became the largest free black population of any state by 1810.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“If you are tired, keep going; if you are scared, keep going; if you are hungry, keep going; if you want to taste freedom, keep going.” Along with the inspirational spirituals for which Moses became so beloved, this motto has been handed down to the present generation as part of her enduring legacy.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“More than a decade before, another young woman in her twenties, Isabella Baumfree, born a Dutch-speaking slave in rural New York, resolved her spiritual crises by running away from her master and eventually changing her name to Sojourner Truth. She seized the opportunity for emancipation in 1826,”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“When her voice is forever stilled, her soul, like the soul of him whom she calls her dearest friend, will later be ‘marching on.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Sea Island blacks spoke in the Gullah dialect of their forebears (a blend of African languages that was a distinctive patois).”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“told someone that the slave had disappeared so quickly that he “must have gone on an underground road.” Allegedly this was the origin of the nickname Underground Railroad.1”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Democratic and radical impulses defined the Revolutionary generation that founded America. The egalitarian ideals of abolitionist activists, especially [Underground Railroad] agents, were perceived as a tribute to the country's founding generation. Promoters of the liberty lines echoed the sentiments of American's founders: impassioned opposition to tyranny and oppression....To that end, radicals advocated civil disobedience, especially in regard to fugitive slaves. Thus the [Underground Railroad] was a full-fledged grassroots resistance movement, representing the true national goals of democracy and liberty.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“The problem was so widespread that in 1793 Congress passed the first Fugitive Slave Act.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“the conference and Howland discovered how Tubman had spent the night, she was horrified, especially at her own thoughtlessness.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“A black sergeant from New Bedford, William Carney, rescued the regiment’s national banner. He planted the flag on the Confederate works, and then, once retreat was sounded, rescued the flag and carried it back to Union lines, sustaining several wounds in the process. For his valor that day, Carney would be the first African American soldier to earn the Medal of Honor.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Owners, physicians, and overseers regularly accused female laborers of pretending to be pregnant. The charge of “shamming” was a self-serving lament as much as a legitimate concern, as it was rare for pregnant women to be given any dispensation.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Free African Society, founded in April 1787,”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“South Carolina slaveholders were the staunchest of Rebels, belligerent for independence and ready for blood.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Lincoln had characterized his own suffering as a form of "hypochondriam," or "hypos." The hypos were something with which men of Lincoln's world were extremely familiar. Melville sketched out the hypos in his classic Moby-Dick: In the very first paragraph, the narrator describes them as "a damp, drizzly November in my soul.”
― Catherine Clinton, [Mrs. Lincoln: A Life] [By: Clinton, Catherine] [January, 2010]

“Tubman despised the licentious atmosphere that plagued towns where Civil War soldiers gathered. As one of the Union doctors complained, the mistreatment of black women was a shame and scandal of occupied Carolina, where lawless conditions reigned during the first year of occupation.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“family”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“One day, Tubman recalled, she was whipped five times before breakfast—and her neck bore the scars from this incident for the rest of her life.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Months before, Lincoln had been forced to slap down another Union general for jumping the gun on emancipation. In his jurisdiction in Missouri, General John C. Frémont declared martial law and abolished slavery in August 1861.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Payne hoped a straightforward soldier’s pension could be obtained on the basis of Tubman’s war record. The inquiry omitted any reference to the issue of back wages—just a simple pension request. Payne’s new bill proposed that Congress grant Tubman a “military pension” of $25 per month, the exact amount received by surviving soldiers.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Suffragist Susan B. Anthony introduced her as a living legend at the twenty-eighth annual convention of the New York State Women’s Suffrage Association, held in 1904.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Tubman’s pension as a widow would be increased on account of special circumstances.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“after the American Civil War, chivalry and gallantry would be reinvented and racialized by advocates of the Lost Cause, the Confederates’ cult of nostalgia.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Douglass’s hesitation was understandable. His own letters and speeches were consistently full of retribution and bloodshed, but Douglass never actually participated in any such activities.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“1857 Dred Scott decision, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that African Americans were not guaranteed rights as citizens and that slave status could not be outlawed by any state government.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“She believed her ability was a kind of second sight, something she inherited from her father, who she said could forecast the weather and had predicted the war with Mexico.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“During Reconstruction, southern freedpeople and blacks in general became scapegoats, suffering a violent backlash in war’s aftermath.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Even if a slave woman became pregnant by another man because of rape, there is evidence that some black men were unwilling to be understanding of the situation.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom