on of Independence, a part of
which was stricken out, as he says, in compliance with the wishes of
South Carolina and Georgia. I will read it. Speaking of the wrongs
done us by the British Government, in introducing slaves among us, he
says: "He (the British King) has waged cruel war against human nature
itself, violating its most sacred right of life and liberty in the
persons of a distant people, who never offended him, captivating and
carrying them into SLAVERY in another hemisphere, or to incur
miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical
warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the
Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market
where MEN should be BOUGHT and SOLD, he has prostituted his
prerogative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or
restrain execrable commerce, and that this assemblage of horrors might
want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very
people to rise in arms against us, and purchase that liberty of which
he has deprived them by murdering the people on whom he has also
obtruded them, thus paying off former crimes committed against the
liberties of one people with crimes which he urges them to commit
against the lives of another." Thus far this great statesman and
philanthropist. Had his contemporaries been ruled by his opinions, the
country had now been at rest on this exciting topic. What
abolitionist, sir, has used stronger language against slavery than Mr.
Jefferson has done? "Cruel war against human nature," "violating its
most sacred rights," "piratical warfare," "opprobrium of infidel
powers," "a market where men should be bought and sold," "execrable
commerce," "assemblage of horrors," "crimes committed against the
liberty of the people," are the brands which Mr. Jefferson has burned
into the forehead of slavery and the slave trade. When, sir, have I,
or any other person opposed to slavery, spoken in stronger and more
opprobrious terms of slavery, than this? You have caused the bust of
this great man to be placed in the centre of your Capitol; in that
conspicuous part where every visitor must see it, with its hand
resting on the Declaration of Independence, engraved upon marble. Why
have you done this? Is it not mockery? Or is it to remind us
continually of the wickedness and danger of slavery? I never pass that
statue without new and increased veneration for the man it represents,
and increased repu