“Sir, Mr. Jefferson, whose hand drew the preamble to the Bill of Rights, has eloquently remarked that we had invoked for ourselves the benefit of a principle which we had denied to others. He saw and felt that slaves, as men, were embraced within this principle.”
THE VOICE OF FREMONT.
John Charles Fremont, one of the noblest sons of the South, says:—
“I heartily concur in all movements which have for their object to repair the mischiefs arising from the violation of good faith in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. I am opposed to slavery in the abstract, and upon principles sustained and made habitual by long settled convictions. I am inflexibly opposed to its extension on this continent beyond its present limits.”
“The great body of non-slaveholding Freemen, including those of the South, upon whose welfare slavery is an oppression, will discover that the power of the General Government over the Public Lands may be beneficially exerted to advance their interests, and secure their independence, knowing this, their suffrages will not be wanting to maintain that authority in the Union, which is absolutely essential to the maintenance of their own liberties, and which has more than once indicated the purpose of disposing of the Public Lands in such a way as would make every settler upon them a freeholder.”
THE VOICE OF BLAIR.
In an Address to the Republicans of Maryland, in 1856, Francis P. Blair says:—
“In every aspect in which slavery among us can be considered, it is pregnant with difficulty. Its continuance in the States in which it has taken root has resulted in the monopoly of the soil, to a great extent, in the hands of the slaveholders, and the entire control of all departments of the State Government; and yet a majority of people in the slave States are not slave-owners. This produces an anomaly in the principle of our free institutions, which threatens in time to bring into subjugation to slave-owners the great body of the free white population.”
THE VOICE OF MAURY.
Lieut. Maury, to whom has been awarded so much well-merited praise in the world of science, says:—