"I don't think it was any worse to have held me in slavery than the
blackest man in the South."

"You are right, Johnson. The color of a man's skin has nothing to do
with the possession of his rights."

"Now, there is Tom Anderson," said Robert, "he is just as black as black
can be. He has been bought and sold like a beast, and yet there is not a
braver man in all the company. I know him well. He is a noble-hearted
fellow. True as steel. I love him like a brother. And I believe Tom
would risk his life for me any day. He don't know anything about his
father or mother. He was sold from them before he could remember. He can
read a little. He used to take lessons from a white gardener in
Virginia. He would go between the hours of 9 P.M. and 4 A.M. He got a
book of his own, tore it up, greased the pages, and hid them in his hat.
Then if his master had ever knocked his hat off he would have thought
them greasy papers, and not that Tom was carrying his library on his
head. I had another friend who lived near us. When he was nineteen
years old he did not know how many letters there were in the ABC's. One
night, when his work was done, his boss came into his cabin and saw him
with a book in his hand. He threatened to give him five hundred lashes
if he caught him again with a book, and said he hadn't work enough to
do. He was getting out logs, and his task was ten logs a day. His
employer threatened to increase it to twelve. He said it just harassed
him; it set him on fire. He thought there must be something good in that
book if the white man didn't want him to learn. One day he had an errand
in the kitchen, and he heard one of the colored girls going over the
ABC's. Here was the key to the forbidden knowledge. She had heard the
white children saying them, and picked them up by heart, but did not
know them by sight. He was not content with that, but sold his cap for a