more, as dangerous to our liberties. If it were founded in injustice and cruelty in 1775, it is the same in 1860. It was dangerous to liberty then; no man now apprehends any danger to liberty, unless from the same source. It is daily threatened by men who are interested in slavery. Liberty cannot be very secure where four million human beings are held in hopeless bondage—where human blood, bone, muscle, and, I might almost say, immortal souls, are articles of merchandise.

The historical quotations I have made bring me to the Revolution. I will cite the opinions of some of the great actors in that great drama. George Washington said, in his will:

"Upon the decease of my wife, it is my desire that the slaves whom I hold in my own right should receive their freedom."

Again, he said:

"I never mean, unless some particular circumstance should compel me, to possess another slave by purchase, it being my first wish to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law."

La Fayette, while in the prison of Magdeburg, said:

"I know not what disposition has been made of my plantation at Cayenne; but I hope Madame de La Fayette will take care that the negroes who cultivate it shall preserve their liberties."

Washington wrote to Robert Morris:

"It will not be conceived, from these observations, that it is my wish to hold these unhappy people (negroes) in slavery. I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it."

Again, he writes to La Fayette:

"The benevolence of your heart, my dear Marquis, is so conspicuous on all occasions, that I never wonder at any fresh proof of it; but your late purchase of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, with a view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit might diffuse itself generally into the people of this country!"

Washington hoped for some plan by which slavery might be legally abolished. Washington lauded the humanity of La Fayette in purchasing an estate for the purpose of emancipating the negroes. I will leave it to gentlemen on the other side to draw the comparison between the chivalry of the South then and now; between the licentious assumption of thought and utterance permitted then, and the course of conviction and conversion esteemed necessary and equitable now, towards hapless offenders in the footsteps of predecessors so illustrious.

Patrick Henry said:

"Slavery is detested; we feel its fatal effects; we deplore it with all the pity of humanity. I repeat again, that it would rejoice my very soul that every one of my fellow beings were emancipated. We ought to lament and deplore the necessity of holding our fellow men in bondage."

Charles Pinckney, Governor of South Carolina, said:

"I must say that I lament the decision of your Legislature upon the question of the importation of slaves after March, 1793. I was in hopes that motives of policy, as well as other good reasons, supported by the direful effects of slavery which at this moment are presented, would have operated to produce a total prohibition of the importation of slaves, whenever the question came to be agitated in any State that might be interested in the measure."

Such were the sentiments of the most enlightened, the most virtuous men of our country in its heroic age. George Mason, of Virginia, stigmatized the slave 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 I have exhausted their utterances, but that my time admits of no more.

The Republican party proclaims no doctrine so ultra as theirs, uses no language so strong as that of those Southern statesmen from whom it gains so much information, and whose views, to a great extent, it conscientiously accepts. We desire only to confine it within its present limits; we ask that it shall not pollute territory now free; we know the utter folly of appealing to the morality or humanity of a pro-slavery party, where the rights of a black man are involved; but when you insist on taking slaves into a free Territory, and smiting the land with this blighting, withering curse, we plant ourselves on our constitutional rights, and say, thus far shall you go, and no further.

The learned gentleman from Alabama, [Mr. Curry,] in alluding to the opinion of the fathers of the Republic, said:

"These, however, were but mere speculations."

Was it a mere speculation when Madison said, "we have seen a mere distinction of color made the ground of the most oppressive dominion of man over man?" Was it as a mere speculation that Jefferson wrote, that Cornwallis would have been right, had he carried away his (Jefferson's) slaves to free them? Was it a mere speculation, a wild fancy, that the framers of the Constitution would not admit that there could be such a thing as property in man? A mere speculation, was it, of Patrick Henry, when he said "that slavery is detested; we feel its fatal effects; we deplore it?" when he declared it would "rejoice his very soul, were all his fellow beings emancipated?" Was it a mere speculation when Jefferson wrote, and his colleagues signed, "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal?" No one then doubted the truth of this declaration. More than a generation passed away before any man dared raise his voice against it. No, sir; this was no mere speculation, but the acknowledgment of a great