Our mothers told us that the whites were killing everybody and eating them.
This may be a reference to the Donner Party: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Donner-party
17 Matching Annotations
- Jan 2026
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I have here spoken of marriage, and it is very common among slaves themselves to talk of it. And it is common for slaves to be married; or at least have the marriage ceremony performed. But there is no such thing as slaves being lawfully married. There has never yet a case occurred where a slave has been tried for bigamy. The man may have as many women as he wishes, and the women as many men; and the law takes no cognizance of such acts among slaves. And in fact some masters, when they have sold the husband from the wife, compel her to take another.
By highlighting marriage, Brown is demonstrating the dehumanizing and undignified nature of slavery.
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- Oct 2025
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EDMUND QUINCY.
Edmund Quincy was an author, editor, and member of the Anti-Slavery Society. He edited several abolitionist journals such as The Abolitionist and The Liberator. The inclusion of his letter at the beginning of Brown's narrative lends credibility to the text, just like William Lloyd Garrison's letter at the beginning of Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
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- Sep 2025
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Tu l’aime ces trois jours, Tu l’aime ces trois jours, Ma coeur a toi, Ma coeur a toi, Tu l’aime ces trois jours
You love her these three days, You love her these three days, My heart to you, My heart to you, You love her these three days
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28th chapter of Deuteronomy
These are the "Blessings for Obedience"
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scuppernon’
A type of grape
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Mrs. Stowe, let me hasten to say, attacked the possibilities of slavery with all the eloquence of genius; but the same genius painted the portrait of the Southern slave-owner, and defended him.
- This is a reference to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was a prominent abolitionist text. Here, Harris is suggesting that it was actually a kind portrait of slavery.
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Hon. Pompey Smash
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soupçon
A trace
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She wore no mourning garments; she had none.
This is a final indignity-- to not be able to mourn one's family properly.
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“That you, a Northerner and a soldier, should presume to ask for the hand of a Southern lady, shows, sir, that you have not the least comprehension of us or of our country.”
A suggestion that the South is a different country, despite Reconstruction.
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“I can wear my old muslin cape, but my arms will have to show, and my feet too,”
There is an intimation here that the poverty brought on from the Civil War is actually an offense to Southern women's modesty.
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noblesse oblige!
Literally means "noble obligation." In practice, it means that if someone claims to be noble, they must act generously like a noble.
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“Are they not our enemies, and the enemies of our country? Vandals? Despots?”
For folks like Gardis, the War has not entirely ended.
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I shall be proud to constitute myself the one to rescue it for the benefit of posterity
Cousin Copeland is still holding on to vestiges of the past. While he is a historian, his work is decidedly self-possessed.
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The Gardiston spirit was hospitable to the core; but these—these were the Vandals, the despots, under whose presence the whole fair land was groaning. No; she would not ask them in.
A reminder that the Civil War created circumstances straining and obliterating tradition.
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She would have preferred to hold parley from the window over the doorway, like the ladies of olden time, but she feared it would not be dignified, seeing that the times were no longer olden, and therefore she went down to the entrance where the two were awaiting her. “Shall I ask them in?” she thought. “What would Aunt Margaretta have done?
Her worry about propriety and call back to "olden times" highlights the "ancient" nature of the family and house. It reminds the reader of her lineage and the family's longevity in the South.
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