American slave trade could not be innocent, nor could its aggravated tur- pitude be denied." From the admitted wickedness of the African slave trade, he very logically deduced the wickedness of slavery itself. " If," said he, " the African slave trade be piracy, human reason cannot resist, nor can human sophistry refute, the conclusion, that the essence of the cnme consists not in the trade, but in slavery. Trade has nothing in itself criminal by the law of nature."
At a time when politicians and pretended patriots were endeavoring to suppress the discussion of slavery, as fata)
to the preservation of the Union, he delivered a Fourth of July address, in which he declared, that the "free and unrestrained discussion of the rights and wrongs of sla- very, far from endangering the union of these States, is the only condition upon which the Union can be preserved and perpetuated. Are you to bless the earth beneath your feet because it spurns the footstep of a slave, and then to choke the utterance of your voice lest the sound of hberty should be re-echoed from the Palmetto groves, with the discordant notes of disunion ? No ! No !"
In a letter to his constituents, he thus described the state of the country : " What see we now ? Commu- nities of slaveholding braggarts of freedom, setting at defiance the laws of nature and of nature's God, restoring slavery where it had been extinguished (Texas), and vainly dreaming to make it eternal. Forming in the sacred name of hberty, constitutions of government, and interdicting to the legislative authority, the most blessed of all human powers, the power of giving Hberty to the slave ! Gov- ernors of States urging upon their legislatures, to make the exercise of the freedom of speech to propagate the rights of the slave to freedom, felony without benefit of clergy. Ministers of the Gospel, like the priest in the parable, coming and looking at the bleeding victim of the highway robber, and passing on the other side ! or baser still, perverting the pages of the sacred volume, to turn into a code of slavery