t. When that is the very point in
controversy, and when inevitable consequences demonstrate
that it must be wrong."

"They [the abolitionists] insist upon immediate,
instantaneous emancipation.... No man, say they, can be
rightfully restrained of his liberty except for crime."
"They come to the conclusion that no laws that sanction or
uphold it [Slavery] can have any moral obligation. The
Constitution is the Supreme law of the land. It does
sanction, it does uphold Slavery; and if this doctrine be
true, that sacred compact has always been [so far] morally
null and void." "He [Washington] THAT SLAVEHOLDER ... came
with other Slaveholders to drive the British myrmidons from
this city and this Hall. Our fathers did not refuse to hold
communion with him or with them. With Slaveholders they
formed the Confederation ... with them they made the
Declaration of Independence." "And in the original draft of
the Declaration was contained a most _eloquent passage upon
this very topic of negro Slavery, which was stricken out in
deference to the wishes of members from the South_."
"Slavery existed then as now." "Our fathers were not less
devoted friends of liberty, not less pure as philanthropists
or pious as Christians than any of their children of the
present day." [Therefore _we_ must not attempt to emancipate
a slave!]

Here is the passage which the speaker thought it so praiseworthy in
the Revolutionary Congress to strike out from the Declaration of
Independence:--

"He [the king] has waged cruel war against human nature
itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty
in the persons of a distant people who never offended him,
captivating and carrying them into slavery in another
hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their
transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the
opprobrium of INFIDEL nations, is the warfare of the
CHRISTIAN King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a
market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has
prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative
attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.
And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of
distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to
rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of