Josiah Quincy

Let the long-trodden-down African, restored by the cheering voice and Christian hand of Britain to his primitive right and condition of manhood, clap his hands and shout for joy on the anniversary of the First of August.

Have the pettifogging, hair-splitting, nonsensical, and yet inflammatory bickerings about the right of search, pandering to the thirst for revenge in France, panting for war to prostrate the disputed title of her king--has the sound of…

Has not the cry of war for the conquest of Mexico, for the expansion of reïnstituted slavery, for the robbery of priests, and the plunder of religious establishments, yet subsided?

And have we not invaded openly, and sword in hand, another of her provinces, and all to effect her dismemberment, and to add ten more slave states to our confederacy?

Have we not aided and abetted one of her provinces in insurrection against her for that cause?

Have we not been fifteen years plotting rebellion against our neighbor republic of Mexico, for abolishing slavery throughout all her provinces?

Are not the journals of our Senate disgraced by resolutions calling for war, to indemnify the slave-pirates of the Enterprise and the Creole for the self-emancipation of their slaves; and to inflict vengeance, by a death of torture, upon…

Have we not seen human beings, made in the likeness of God, and endowed with immortal souls, burnt at the stake, not for their offences, but for their color?

Have we not seen printing-presses destroyed; halls erected for the promotion of human freedom levelled with the dust, and consumed by fire; and wanton, unprovoked murder perpetrated with impunity, by slave-mongers?

And have we not seen a sworn Postmaster-general formally avow that, though he could not license this cut-purse protection of the peculiar institution, the perpetrators of this highway robbery must justify themselves by the plea of…

Have we not tamely submitted for years to the daily violation of the freedom of the post-office and of the press by a committee of seal-breakers?

Have we not seen, for the last twenty years, the constitution and solemn treaties with foreign nations trampled on by cruel oppression and lawless imprisonment of colored mariners in the Southern States, in cold-blooded defiance of a…

Have we not seen the sacred right of petition totally suppressed for the people of the free states during a succession of years, and is it not yet inexorably suppressed?

Is it not enough that, by the operation of this radical iniquity in the organization of the government, an immense disproportion of all offices, from the highest to the lowest, civil, military, naval, executive, and judicial, are held by…

Are we not suffering our own hands to be manacled, and our own feet to be fettered, with the chains of slavery?

May Heaven in mercy grant that we may be spared the deeper damnation of seeing our names recorded, not among the liberators, but with the oppressors of mankind!

O, with what pungent mortification and shame must I confess that in the transcendent glories of that day our names will not be associated with yours!

Proceed until millions upon millions of your brethren of the human race, restored to the rights with which they were endowed by your and their Creator, but of which they have been robbed by ruffians of their own race, shall send their…

People of that renowned island!--children of the land of our forefathers!--proceed, proceed in this glorious career, till the whole earth shall be redeemed from the greatest curse that ever has afflicted the human race.

But none of them foresaw or imagined what would be the consequence of the triumphant establishment in the continent of North America of an Anglo-Saxon American nation on the foundation of the natural equality of mankind, and the…

The owner of a slave is the owner of a living corpse; but he is not the owner of a man.

The soul of one man cannot by human law be made the property of another.

And herein consists the fallacy with which the holders of slaves often delude themselves, by assuming that the test of property is human law.

Hence it is, too, that, by the law of nature and of God, man can never be made the property of man.

The extinction of SLAVERY from the face of the earth is a problem, moral, political, religious, which at this moment rocks the foundations of human society throughout the regions of civilized man.