There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of Slavery among us.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, THE MOST UNREMITTING DESPOTISM on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.

There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving.

With such authorities, Personal and Philosophic, American and Foreign, I need not hesitate in this ungracious task; but Truth, which is mightier than Mason and Jefferson, than John Locke, Adam Smith, and Samuel Johnson, than Condorcet…

In the face of this unutterable abomination, where impiety, cruelty, brutality, and robbery all strive for mastery, it is vain to assert humanity or refinement in its authors.

Full well I know that the conscience, which speaks so powerfully to the solitary soul, is often silent in the corporate body, and that, in all ages and countries, numbers, when gathered in communities and States, have sanctioned acts from…

And yet I know no surer way of judging a people than by its laws, especially where those laws have been long continued and openly maintained.

Whatever may be the eminence of individual virtue,--and I would not so far disparage humanity as to suppose that offences so general where Slavery exists are universal,--it is not reasonable or logical to infer that the body of…

And this conclusion must stand unquestioned, just so long as the Law of Slavery exists unrepealed.

In vain you assert such “happy accidents.” In vain you show individuals who do not exert the wickedness of the law.

The Barbarism still endures, solemnly, legislatively, judicially attested in the very SLAVE CODE, and proclaiming constantly the character of its authors.

But enough is already known to arouse the indignant condemnation of mankind.

A sated libertine, in a land where vice is legalized, could not expose his victim with apter words.

Like this story, from the lips of a Slave-Master, is another, where the master, angry because his slave sought to regain his God-given liberty, deliberately cut the tendons of his heel, thus horribly maiming him for life.

Their accumulating number, authenticated in every possible manner, by the press, by a cloud of witnesses, and by the confession of Slave-Masters, stares us constantly in the face.

Here we are brought again to the Slave Code, under the shelter of which these things, and worse, are done with complete impunity.

And, as a principle of moral right, every person in his retirement must repudiate it.

Here is irresponsible power, rendered more irresponsible still by the seclusion of the plantation, and absolutely fortified by supplementary law excluding the testimony of slaves.

That under its shelter enormities should occur, stranger than fiction, too terrible for imagination, and surpassing any attested experience, is simply according to the course of Nature and the course of history.

All this is ancient Barbarism, according to the evidence; but the analogies of life show that such things must be, where Slavery prevails.

The visitation of the abbeys in England disclosed vice and disorder in startling forms, cloaked by the irresponsible privacy of monastic life.

A similar visitation of plantations would disclose more fearful results, cloaked by the irresponsible privacy of Slavery.

Every Slave-Master on his plantation is a Bashaw, with all the prerogatives of a Turk.

According to Hobbes, he is a “petty king.” This is true; and every plantation is of itself a petty kingdom, with more than the immunities of an abbey.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.