trade as an "infernal traffic!" He said that "slavery
discouraged manufactures; that it produced the most pernicious effect on
manners." Without intending to be personal or offensive, I think I can
pause here and properly remark, that if the effects of slavery are
changed in every other respect, the effect on manners is the same now
that it was in the last century. The epithets used by men on this floor,
their arrogant bearing towards their peers, is abundant proof that there
is no change in that respect. We have frequently heard members, this
session, speak of a great party in this country as the Black Republican
party. Legislative bodies in the slave States have so far forgotten what
should be due to the standing and dignity of a Legislature, as to call a
certain party, in their official proceedings, the "Black Republican
party." Why are men betrayed into such violations of the proprieties of
life? There can be no other reason than the one given by George Mason
eighty years ago: slavery produces a most pernicious effect upon
manners. I know it is claimed, by men in the slave States, that slavery
is necessary to the highest development of human society; but I think
the experience of members of Congress is, that slavery does not always
produce this beneficial result.

I revert to my Southern authorities upon the peculiar institution. Mr.
Iredell, of North Carolina, thus expresses himself:

"When the entire abolition of slavery takes place, it will be an event
which must be most pleasing to every generous mind, and to every friend
of human nature."

Thomas Jefferson writes:

"The spirit of the master is abating: that of the slave rising from the
dust; his condition mollifying; the way, I hope, preparing, under the
auspices of Heaven, for a total emancipation."

He continues, in his plan for a Constitution for Virginia:

"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these
people are to be free."

In a letter to Dr. Gordon, on Lord Cornwallis's invasion of Virginia,
Mr. Jefferson says:

"He carried off also about thirty slaves, (Jefferson's.) Had this been
to give them freedom, he would have done right; but it was to consign
them to inevitable death from small-pox and putrid fever then raging in
his camp."

I conclude here my citations from the united voices of some of the best
men of the country, before and after the Revolution, against slavery as
an evil, and a great national sin, not that