The face of Nature may be blasted, the land may be struck with sterility, villages may be swept by floods of flame, and whole families entombed alive in its burning sepulchre; but all these evils are small, compared with the deep, abiding, unutterable curse from an act of national wrong.
Sumner contrasts natural disasters with the deeper curse of national wrongdoing associated with slavery.
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According to recent calculations, its annual cost is not less than a thousand millions of dollars.
It applies an arrogant and unrelenting ostracism to all who express themselves against Slavery.
Nor should we be too impatient to witness the fulfilment of our aspirations.
Their existence is a disgrace to civilization; for it implies the common consent of nations to the Arbitrament of War, as regulated by these laws.
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