Josiah Quincy: “The owner of ten slaves believes that slavery is not an evil.”

His spirit of liberty was fostered and inspired by the writings of Milton, Sydney, and Locke, of which the American Declaration of Independence was an emanation, and the constitution of the United States, with the exception of the clauses…

Though conscious, being then in his seventy-eighth year, that he stood on the threshold of human life, he sought no relaxation from duty, no exemption from its performance.

The charge, therefore, that our government did really give up that important territory, when it was at its option to retain it, is purely and unqualifiedly untrue; and I now charge that it was known by Mr.

He knew how little a majority of the men of his own time were disposed or qualified to estimate his character with justice.