Henry Cabot Lodge: “The Fugitive Slave Law was in absolute conflict with the awakened conscience and moral sentiment of the North.”

But they were dangerous then, and Washington, with his honest hatred of all that seemed to him to partake of meanness or treason, proposed to put them down and render them harmless, being well convinced, after his clear-sighted fashion…

All that can be said is, that without the influence and the labors of Washington the convention of 1787, in all probability, would have failed of success.

Here is again the same note, always so true and clear, that the United States are not colonies but an independent nation.

Men are the creatures of the time in which they live, and take their color from the conditions which surround them, as the chameleon does from the grass or leaves in which it hides.