...I am an abolitionist for the sake of my own race—Contact with the African degenerates our white race—I find the association with them injurious to my child—keenly as I watch to prevent it & his faithful nurse to help me ... She is a good woman & so are many of them—Still the race is a degraded one ...
—Elizabeth Blair Lee (1818–?)
That is ever the way. ‘Tis all jealousy to the bride and good wishes to the corpse.
—J.M. (James Matthew)
But Maine, perhaps, will soon be where Massachusetts is. A good part of her territory is already as bare and commonplace as much of our neighborhood, and her villages generally are not so well shaded as ours.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)