My name is Harriet Tubman. I did not choose bondage. Noone does.It was put on mebefore I could speak, and I mean to speak against it now with every breath I have left.You have heard the Defenders of the Constitution stand in this hall and tell you that the law protects slavery. That fugitives must be returned to their masters, because a document written by men in Philadelphia says so. That the government's hands are tied.
I have felt the whip on my own back. I have carried a scar on my head since I was a girl, from an overseer's weight thrown in anger, meant for another and landing on me instead. I have watched sisters carried off in chains to be sold further south, never to be seen again. I ask the Defenders of the Constitution this: what document, what law of man, could ever make that right? I think slavery is the next thing to hell. If a person would send another human being into bondage, he would be bad enough to send that person into hell itself, if only he could reach it.
They tell us the Constitution permits this for a season, that it is the price of union. I tell you a union built on chains is no union worth keeping whole. There is a law older than any Congress, older than any Constitution — it was written before Philadelphia, before Jamestown, before this land had a name the newcomers gave it. It says a person is not property. It says liberty is not a privilege for some men to grant and others to be denied. That law does not expire in twenty years, or ever.
I had reasoned this out in my own mind: there is one of two things a person has a right to — liberty, or death. If I could not have one, I would take the other, for no one has the right to hold me against my will. That is not defiance. That is simply what is true.
I did not wait for Congress to agree with me. I did not wait for the Constitution to catch up to justice. I walked north, alone, trusting in the Lord to lead me, for I did not know the way myself, only that I could not stay. And when I reached free ground, I looked down at my own hands to see if I was the same person. There was such glory over everything. That is what is waiting on the other side of this fight — not just for me, but for every soul still standing in bondage tonight.
So I ask you — will you go on defending a document's silence while men and women are sold on courthouse steps? Or will you stand for the higher law that was written on the human heart long before any Constitution put ink to paper? I did not escape bondage to stay silent about those left behind. And I will not stop making this case until slavery itself is put in the ground.
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