'He [the planter] looks around him and sees that the condition of the great mass of emancipated Africans is one in comparison with which the condition of his slaves is enviable;—and he is convinced that if he withdraws from his slaves his authority, his support, his protection, and leaves them to shift for themselves, he turns them out to be vagabonds, and paupers, and felons, and to find in the work-house and the penitentiary, the home which they ought to have retained on his paternal acres.—Hundreds of humane and Christian slaveholders retain their fellow-men in bondage, because they are convinced that they can do no better.'—[Address of the Managers of the Colonization Society of Connecticut.—Af. Rep. vol. iv. pp. 119, 120.]
'I am not complaining of the owners of slaves; they cannot get rid of them.—I do not doubt that masters treat their slaves with kindness, nor that the slaves are happier than they could be if set free in this country.'—[Address delivered before the Hampden Col. Soc., July 4th, 1828, by Wm. B. O. Peabody, Esq.]
'Policy, and even the voice of humanity forbade the progress of manumission; and the salutary hand of law came forward to co-operate with our convictions, and to arrest the flow of our feelings, and the ardor of our desires.'—[Review of the Report of the Committee of Foreign Relations.—Af. Rep. vol. iv. p. 268.]
'When an owner of slaves tells me that he will freely relinquish his slaves, or even that he will relinquish one-half of their value, on condition that he be compensated for the other half, and provision be made for their transportation, I feel that he has made a generous proposal, and I cannot charge him with all the guilt of slavery, though he may continue to be a slaveholder.'—[Af. Rep. vol. v. p. 63.]
'Even slavery must be viewed as a great national calamity; a public evil entailed upon us by untoward circumstances, and perpetuated for the want of appropriate remedies.'—[Idem, vol. v. p. 89.]
'Slavery is an evil which is entailed upon the present generation of slaveholders, which they must suffer, whether they will or not.'—[Idem, p. 179.]
'Our brethren of the South, have the same sympathies, the same moral sentiments, the same love of liberty as ourselves. By them as by us, slavery is felt to be an evil, a hindrance to our prosperity, and a blot upon our character. But it was in being when they were born, and has been forced upon them by a previous generation.'—[Address of Rev. Dr. Nott.—Idem, p. 277.]
'With a writer in the Southern Review we say, "the situation of the people of these States was not of their choosing. When they came to the inheritance, it was subject to this mighty incumbrance, and it would be criminal in them to rain or waste the estate, to get rid of the burden at once." With this writer we add also, in the language of Captain Hall, that the "slaveholders ought not (immediately) to disentangle themselves from the obligations which have devolved upon them, as the masters of slaves." We believe that a master may sustain his relation to the slave, with as little criminality as the slave sustains his relation to the master.' * * * 'Slavery, in its mildest form, is an evil of the darkest character. Cruel and unnatural in its origin, no plea can be urged in justification of its continuance but the plea of necessity.'—[Af. Rep. vol. v. pp. 329, 334.]
'How much more consistent and powerful would be our example, but for that population within our limits, whose condition (necessary condition, I will not deny) is so much at war with our institutions, and with that memorable national Declaration—"that all men are created equal."'—[Fourteenth Ann. Report.]
'It [the Society] condemns no man because he is a slaveholder.' * * * 'They [abolitionists] confound the misfortunes of one generation with the crimes of another, and would sacrifice both individual and public good to an unsubstantial theory of the rights of man.'—[A. R. vol. vii. pp. 200, 202.]