Reflect now upon the tendencies of twelve hundred millions of dollars of associated wealth, directly represented in your national legislature by one hundred members, together with one hundred and forty members representing persons…

But the curse fastened by the progress of Christian charity and of human rights upon the African slave-trade could not rest there.

If the African slave-trade was piracy, the coasting American slave-trade could not be innocent, nor could its aggravated turpitude be denied.

In the sight of the same God who abhors the iniquity of the African slave-trade, neither the American slave-trade nor slavery itself can be held guiltless.

From the suppression of the African slave-trade, therefore, the British Parliament, impelled by the irresistible influence of the British people, proceeded to point the battery of its power against slavery itself.

At the expense of one hundred millions of dollars, it abolished slavery, and emancipated all the slaves in the British transatlantic colonies; and the government entered upon a system of negotiation with all the powers of the world for the…

But the associated wealth of the slaveholders outweighed the principles of the Revolution, and by the constitution of the United States a compromise was established between slavery and freedom.

The principle is that the House of Representatives of the United States is a representation only of the persons and freedom of the North, and of the persons, property, and slavery, of the South.

Its practical operation has been to give the balance of power in the house, and in every department of the government, into the hands of the minority of numbers.

Of six heads of the executive departments, three are slaveholders; securing thus, with the President, a majority in all cabinet consultations and executive councils.

As to the house itself, if an article of the constitution had prescribed, or a standing rule of the house had required, that no other than a slaveholder should ever be its Speaker, the regulation could not be more rigorously observed than…

It is so much a matter of course to see such a person in the chair, that, if a Northern man but thinks of aspiring to the chair, he is only made a laughing-stock for the house.

With such consequences staring us in the face, what are we to think when we are told that the government of the United States is a democracy of numbers--a government by a majority of the people?

Were it not for this curse of slavery, there are some of them with whom I should be on terms of the most intimate and confidential friendship.

Go, with the commendation of the Saviour to his apostles when he first sent them forth to redeem the world: 'Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.' In the ardor of your zeal for moral reform forget not the rights of…

Self-government is the foundation of all our political and social institutions; and it is by self-government alone that the laws of temperance can be enforced....

Above all, let no tincture of party politics be mingled with the pure stream from the fountain of temperance.

The first of these opinions was that the royal charter to the Colony of Massachusetts was a nullity, because the King of England had no right to grant lands in foreign countries, which belonged of right to their native inhabitants.

This opinion struck directly at all right of property held under the authority of the royal charter, and, followed to its logical conclusions, would have proved the utter impotence of the royal charter to confer power of government, any…

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.

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

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

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

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

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…