ther was the work of the young men circumscribed by
narrow local boundaries. The report of their committee, in the year
1823, on "The Condition of the Black Population of the United States,"
could hardly be characterized as timid in its utterances on the moral
character of American slavery. A few lines will indicate the tone of it
in this respect:

"Excepting only the horrible system of the West India Islands,
we have never heard of slavery in any country, ancient or
modern, pagan, Mohammedan, or Christian, so terrible in its
character, so pernicious in its tendency, so remediless in its
anticipated results, as the slavery which exists in these
United States.... When we use the strong language which we
feel ourselves compelled to use in relation to this subject,
we do not mean to speak of animal suffering, but of an immense
moral and political evil.... In regard to its influence on the
white population the most lamentable proof of its
deteriorating effects may be found in the fact that, excepting
the pious, whose hearts are governed by the Christian law of
reciprocity between man and man, and the wise, whose minds
have looked far into the relations and tendencies of things,
none can be found to lift their voices against a system so
utterly repugnant to the feelings of unsophisticated
humanity--a system which permits all the atrocities of the
domestic slave trade--which permits the father to sell his
children as he would his cattle--a system which consigns one
half of the community to hopeless and utter degradation, and
which threatens in its final catastrophe to bring down the
same ruin on the master and the slave."[272:1]

The historical value of the paper from which these brief extracts are
given, as illustrating the attitude of the church at the time, is
enhanced by the use that was made of it. Published in the form of a
review article in a magazine of national circulation, the recognized
organ of the orthodox Congregationalists, it was republished in a
pamphlet for gratuitous distribution and extensively circulated in New
England by the agency of the Andover students. It was also republished
at Richmond, Va. Other laborers at the East in the same cause were
Joshua Leavitt, Bela B. Edwards, and Eli Smith, afterward illustrious as
a missionary,[273:1] and Ralph Randolph Gurley, secretary of the
Colonization