Quotes from John Jakes

emancipation

What but faith in the goodness and uniqueness of its essential principles could unite and sustain a country as diverse as America? What but faith could have enabled the country to survive the trials of the Revolution, the chaos and grief of a civil war—

The concert of the guns was ready to resume.

Every colored person in this country is enslaved to the fears of whites and to the way those fears influence white behavior.

The slavery of ignorance is as wicked as any other kind. Perhaps it's the crudest slavery of all, because any man can see an iron cuff on his own leg, but it's hard to detect an invisible one." She watched for a reaction.

Were you happy when you heard the news, Grandpa?" "You can't believe how happy." "What did you do to celebrate?" "I started dancing and fell in a trench full of shit.

Ware's—in the Gazette, and I'll continue to do

I find it a pity that freedom to disagree was not tolerated here today." Cooper

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods

Had she been guided by some unexpressed belief that Negroes were somehow unfit for a white woman to touch? She didn't know, but this moment in the gray morning jarred her to awareness. Rosalie felt no different from any other child hurting.

Emigrant Gap. Califo

What would bring the Confederacy to an inglorious end was the same thing that had so foolishly created it a rigidity of thought, a clinging to old ways, a refusal to adapt and change.

to err is human, to forgive, divine." "You like Shakespeare, do you?

I have dwelt a while in the soul of a shackled black man and taken a little of it into my own, forever.

It was a reaction bred into her from childhood. That was an explanation, not an excuse. The reaction shamed her, and yet she seemed powerless to banish it or keep it from affecting her behavior.

crossroads about the same time tomorrow. Ashton spent a few moments chattering about her excuse for being away from Mont Royal; it also involved staying with a friend, a nonexistent one. Madeline heard Ashton's voice, but few of the words registered. The three women crowded into the chaise, Ashton in the middle. It was evident to Madeline that Orry's sister didn't like squeezing against a Negress, but she'd just have to put up with it.

I cannot describe the change nor do I know when it took place, yet I know that there is a change for I look on the carcass of a man now with pretty much such feeling as I would were it a horse or hog.

I'm not sure it's altogether right to encourage and reward fighting and killing, but that's the way things are.

there was always risk; always the promise of pain— But the promise of love was stronger.

Defoe's Moll Flanders, Fielding's Tom Jones and Johnson's moralizing fable, Rasselas.

Trouble was, when you refused to learn, the result was what surrounded the rumbling wagon: soured earth; abandoned homes; imperiled lives. Ruin.

poor, or take a little chance

face still had the power to torture him. But

But I also think the doctrine of laissez faire, carried to its extreme, is equally repugnant. Too many capitalists use laissez faire as an excuse to gouge the public and exploit the poor.