f a race inferior to his
master, and that therefore it is justifiable to enslave him, we reply,
that the right to freedom is not founded on the equality of the holder
to any other human being, else were every white man also lawfully to be
enslaved by every other stronger or wiser than himself. But the right to
freedom is founded simply and solely on the moral nature wherewith God
has endowed every man and woman of the human race, enabling them, by its
use, to attain to that virtue which is the end of their creation. And
whereas others, again, have defended Slavery on the grounds of the
supposed Divine sanction to be found for it in the Scriptures, we reply,
that we deplore the condition of those whose religion can lend itself
to the task of seeking to appeal to God for the permission of an
institution which the consciences He has made unequivocally loathe
and condemn. Nor shall we hesitate to stigmatize such an appeal as
hypocrisy, until the theologians who make it advance a step farther, and
tell us that they are prepared to represent Jesus of Nazareth as one
who, in fitting time and place, might have been a purchaser and a master
of slaves. Thus, Madam, do we still condemn and abhor Slavery, as we
have ever done, as in itself, and in its own nature, utterly evil and
utterly indefensible; and we consider its vast and terrible results of
cruelty and immorality to be only the natural fruit of so stupendous a
wrong.

"We have not withheld from your nation either the tribute of admiration
for the vast sacrifices you have made, or of sympathy for the
bereavements and sufferings you have endured. But the expression of such
admiration and sympathy from the truest hearts among us has been almost
silenced by the solemn joy wherewith we have beheld your country purging
herself, even through seas of blood, for her guilty participation in the
crimes of the past, and preparing for herself the stainless future of 'a
land wherein dwelleth righteousness.' We have rejoiced in the midst of
sorrow to know that the doom of Slavery was written by a Divine Hand,
even from the hour when its upholders dared to believe it possible in
the face of Heaven to build up a State upon an injustice. We have looked
with awe-struck consciences to this great revelation of the moral laws
which govern the nations of the earth, and show to men who sought for
God in the records of distant ages that the Living Lord still rules
on high, and is working out even