from their minds.

Of the immense advantages of this contest I know not how to speak;
indeed, the very agitation of the question which it involved has been
highly important. Never was the heart of man so expanded; never were its
generous sympathies so generally and so perseveringly excited. These
sympathies, thus called into existence, have been useful in the
preservation of a national virtue. For anything we know, they may have
contributed greatly to form a counteracting balance against the
malignant spirit, generated by our almost incessant wars during this
period, so as to have preserved us from barbarism.

It has been useful also in the discrimination of moral character; in
private life it has enabled us to distinguish the virtuous from the more
vicious part of the community[A]. It has shown the general
philanthropist; it has unmasked the vicious in spite of his pretension
to virtue. It has afforded us the same knowledge in public life; it has
separated the moral statesman from the wicked politician. It has shown
us who, in the legislative and executive offices of our country, are fit
to save, and who to destroy, a nation.

[Footnote A: I have had occasion to know many thousand persons in the
course of my travels on this subject, and I can truly say, that the part
which these took on this great question was always a true criterion of
their moral character. Some indeed opposed the abolition, who seemed to
be so respectable, that it was difficult to account for their conduct;
but it invariably turned out, in the course of time, either that they
had been influenced by interested motives, or that they were not men of
steady moral principle. In the year 1792, when the national enthusiasm
was so great, the good were as distinguishable from the bad, according
to their disposition to this great cause, as if the divine Being had
marked them, or, as a friend of mine the other day observed, as we may
suppose the sheep to be from the goats on the day of judgment.]

It has furnished us also with important lessons. It has proved what a
creature man is! how devoted he is to his own interest! to what a length
of atrocity he can go, unless fortified by religious principle! But as
if this part of the prospect would be too afflicting, it has proved to
us, on the other hand, what a glorious instrument he may become in the
hands of his Maker; and that a little virtue, when properly leavened, is
made capable of counteracting the effe