fifty years, were
both made in favor of gradual emancipation. He did not perceive that on
a question of human right the negroes were to be excepted from the human
race. And yet Mr. Clay was the owner of slaves. Cast into life when
slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he did not perceive,
as I think no wise man has perceived, how it could be at once eradicated
without producing a greater evil even to the cause of human liberty
itself. His feeling and his judgment, therefore, ever led him to oppose
both extremes of opinion on the subject. Those who would shiver into
fragments the Union of these States, tear to tatters its now venerated
Constitution, and even burn the last copy of the Bible, rather than
slavery should continue a single hour, together with all their more
halting sympathizers, have received, and are receiving, their just
execration; and the name and opinions and influence of Mr. Clay are fully
and, as I trust, effectually and enduringly arrayed against them. But I
would also, if I could, array his name, opinions, and influence against
the opposite extreme--against a few but an increasing number of men who,
for the sake of perpetuating slavery, are beginning to assail and to
ridicule the white man's charter of freedom, the declaration that "all men
are created free and equal." So far as I have learned, the first American
of any note to do or attempt this was the late John C. Calhoun; and if I
mistake not, it soon after found its way into some of the messages of the
Governor of South Carolina. We, however, look for and are not much shocked
by political eccentricities and heresies in South Carolina. But only
last year I saw with astonishment what purported to be a letter of a very
distinguished and influential clergyman of Virginia, copied, with apparent
approbation, into a St. Louis newspaper, containing the following to me
very unsatisfactory language:

"I am fully aware that there is a text in some Bibles that is not in mine.
Professional abolitionists have made more use of it than of any passage in
the Bible. It came, however, as I trace it, from Saint Voltaire, and was
baptized by Thomas Jefferson, and since almost universally regarded as
canonical authority`All men are born free and equal.'

"This is a genuine coin in the political currency of our generation. I am
sorry to say that I have never seen two men of whom it is true. But I must
admit I never saw the Siamese Twins, and therefore