If the foundation is not justice, the dome cannot be high enough, or splendid enough, to save the temple.
But above everything in the minds of our fathers was the desire for union—to create a Nation, to become a Power.
Our fathers compromised.
A compromise is a bargain in which each party defrauds the other, and himself.
The compromise our fathers made was the coffin of honor and the cradle of war.
A brazen falsehood and a timid truth are the parents of compromise.
But some—the greatest and the best—believed in liberty for all. They repeated the splendid sayings of the Roman: "By the law of nature all men are free;"—of the French King: "Men are born free and equal;"—of the sublime Zeno: "All men are by nature equal, and virtue alone establishes a difference between them."
In the year preceding the Declaration of Independence, a society for the abolition of slavery was formed in Pennsylvania and its first President was one of the wisest and greatest of men—Benjamin Franklin. A society of the same character was established in New York in 1785; its first President was John Jay—the second, Alexander Hamilton.
But in a few years these great men were forgotten. Parties rivaled each other in the defence of wrong. Politicians cared only for place and power. In the clamor of the heartless, the voice of the generous was lost. Slavery became supreme. It dominated legislatures, courts and parties; it rewarded the faithless and little; it degraded the honest and great.
And yet, through all these hateful years, thousands and thousands of noble men and women denounced the degradation and the crime. Most of their names are unknown. They have given a glory to obscurity. They have filled oblivion with honor.