“I need not point out the absurdity of your exertions for liberty while you have slaves in your houses, for one minute’s reflection is, methinks, sufficient for that purpose.”
— Caesar Sarter, 1774
“Liberty is equally as precious to a Black man as it is to a white one, and Bondage equally as intolerable to the one as it is to the other.”
— Lemuel Haynes, 1776
“We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”
— Samuel Johnson, 1775
“They have, in common with all other men, a natural and unalienable right to that freedom… Every principle from which America has acted in the course of their unhappy difficulties with Great Britain pleads stronger than a thousand arguments in favor of your petitioners… may the inhabitants of this state be no longer chargeable with the inconsistency of acting themselves the part which they condemn and oppose in others.”
—Petition of a Great Number of Blacks to the Massachusetts Legislature, 1777
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