- Harriet: [to Gideon, at gunpoint] You'll die right here. On a frozen, blood-soaked battlefield, the moans of a generation of young men in your ears, dying in agony around you, for a lost cause. For a vile and wicked idea! For the sin of slavery! Can you hear them? God don't mean people to own people, Gideon! Our time is near!
- Harriet: [addressing the Colored Union regiment] Suppose there's a snake coiled at your feet, and it shoots up to bite you. Folks get scared and send for a doctor to cut out the bite. But the snake, he rolled up there and while the doctor cutting, he bites you again, in a new place this time. The doctor makes another cut, the snake spring up and bites again. Finally you realize the snake ain't gonna stop till someone kills him. Slavery is still alive. Those rice fields downriver are feeding Rebel troops, with the toil of a thousand slaves still in bondage. Our mission is to free those slaves. We've waited years to be allowed to fight in this war, against our own enslavement. And it will not be won without us! Now is our time! Are you ready to kill the snake?
- Gideon Brodess: Daddy warned me, "Boy, having a favorite slave is like having a favorite pig. You can feed it, play with it, give it a name, but one day you might have to eat it or sell it. You know it, and the pig knows it. If you have to sell it, there's no more guilt than separating piglets. And if you have to eat it, you'll forget its name." I hope one day I forget yours.
- Eliza Brodess: I'm suffocating in this place. It's like a prison where I'm awaiting my execution, surrounded by hostile, black-faced guards.