Mr. Breckinridge
had that night uttered respecting the principles of the Colonization
Society, and what had been effected by that institution, would be
carefully preserved; that on other occasions, and by other persons, on
both sides the Atlantic, Mr. Breckinridge's arguments might be
canvassed, his facts investigated, and his sentiments made known. I
shall offer no apology (continued Mr. T.) for referring to a point
discussed last evening, but not fairly disposed of. I am by no means
satisfied, nor do I think the enlightened, and least of all the
Christian world, will be satisfied with the doctrine which for two
evenings has been laid down and maintained by Mr. Breckinridge, that
America, as a nation, is not responsible before God for the sin of
slavery. I cannot, sir, receive that doctrine. I cannot lightly pass
it over. Much hinges upon this point, nor will I consent that America
shall lay the flattering unction to her soul that she is not her
brother's keeper; that any wretches within her precincts may commit
soul-murder, and she be innocent, by reason of her wilful, self
induced, and self continued impotency. I do not believe the doctrine
of "the irresponsibleness of America as a nation" to be politically
sound; still less do I believe it to be the doctrine of the Bible.

Sir, I fearlessly charge America, as a nation--as the United States of
America--as a voluntary confederacy of free republics--as living under
one common constitution, and one common government--with being a
nation of slave-holders, and the vilest and most culpable on the face
of the earth.

I charge America with having a slave-holding president; with holding
seven thousand slaves at the seat of government; with licensing the
slave trade for four hundred dollars; with permitting the domestic
slave trade to the awful extent of one hundred thousand souls per
annum; with allowing prisons, built with the public money, to be made
the receptacles of unoffending, home-born Americans, destined for the
southern market; with permitting her legislators and the highest
functionaries in the state to trample upon every dictate of humanity,
and every principle sacred in American independence, by trafficking
"in slaves and the souls of men."

I charge America, "as a nation," with permitting within her boundaries
a wide spread system, which my opponent has himself described as one
of clear robbery, universal concubinage, horrid cruelty, and
unilluminated ignor