If your forefathers have been degenerate enough to introduce slavery into your country, to contaminate the minds of her citizens, you ought to have the virtue of extirpating it.
Emancipated from the shackles of despotism, you know no superior; free and independent, you stand equally respected among your foes, and your allies.—Renowned in history, for your valour, and for your wisdom, your way is left open to the highest eminence of human perfection.
But while with pleasing hopes you may anticipate such an event, the echo of expiring freedom cannot fail to assail the ears, and pierce the heart with keen reproach.
In the first struggles for American freedom, in the enthusiastic ardour for attaining liberty and independence, one of the most noble sentiments that ever adorned the human breast, was loudly proclaimed in all her councils—
Deeply penetrated with a sense of Equality, they held it as a fixed principle, "that all men are by nature and of right ought to be free, that they are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, amongst which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Nevertheless, when the blessings of peace were showered upon them, when they had obtained these rights which they had so boldly contended for, then they became apostates to their principles, and rivetted the fetters of slavery upon the unfortunate Africans.
Deceitful men! who could have suggested, that American patriotism would at this day countenance a conduct so inconsistent; that while America boasts of being a land of freedom, and an asylum for the oppressed of Europe, she should at the same time foster an abominable nursery for slaves, to check the shoots of her growing liberty?
Deaf to the clamours of criticism, she feels no remorse, and blindly pursues the object of her destruction; she encourages the propagation of vice, and suffers her youth to be reared in the habits of cruelty.
Not even the sobs and groans of injured innocence, which reek from every State, can excite her pity, nor human misery bend her heart to sympathy.
Cruel and oppressive she wantonly abuses the Rights of Man, and willingly sacrifices her liberty at the altar of slavery: What an opportunity is here given for triumph among her enemies? Will they not exclaim, that upon this very day, while the Americans the anniversary of Freedom and Independence, abject slavery exists tn all her States but one.[37]