Quote#Work
Their right, like that of their white fellow-citizens, dates back to…
Quote byJohn Greenleaf Whittier · 1807–1892
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Quoted in The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, by William Cooper Nell, p. 339. (1855).
English (original)
Their right, like that of their white fellow-citizens, dates back to the dread arbitrament of war. Their bones whiten every stricken field of the Revolution; their feet tracked with blood the snows of Jersey; their toil built up every fortification south of the Potomac; they shared the famine and nakedness of Valley Forge, and the pestilential horrors of the old Jersey prison ship.
— John Greenleaf Whittier
More from John Greenleaf Whittier
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Press bravely onward! — not in vain Your generous trust in human kind; The good which bloodshed could not gain Your peaceful zeal shall find.
The windows of my soul I throw Wide open to the sun.
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Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country's flag," she said.
So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore; The glory from his gray hairs gone For evermore!