"It is the glory of our country to have originated a system of opposition to the commerce in that part of our fellow-creatures who compose the nations of Africa. Much has been done by the citizens of some of the States to abolish this disgraceful traffic, and to improve the condition of those unhappy people whom the ignorance, or the avarice of our ancestors had bequeathed to us as slaves. But the evil still continues, and our country is yet disgraced by laws and practices which level the creature man with a part of the brute creation. Many reasons concur in persuading us to abolish domestic slavery in our country. It is inconsistent with the safety of the liberties of the United States. Freedom and slavery can not long exist together. An unlimited power over the time, labor, and posterity of our fellow-creatures, necessarily unfits man for discharging the public and private duties of citizens of a republic. It is inconsistent with sound policy, in exposing the States which permit it, to all those evils which insurrections and the most resentful war have introduced into one of the richest islands in the West Indies. It is unfriendly to the present exertions of the inhabitants of Europe in favor of liberty. What people will advocate freedom, with a zeal proportioned to its blessings, while they view the purest republic in the world tolerating in its bosom a body of slaves? In vain has the tyranny of kings been rejected, while we permit in our country a domestic despotism which involves in its nature most of the vices and miseries that we have endeavored to avoid. It is degrading to our rank as men in the scale of being. Let us use our reason and social affections for the purposes for which they were given, or cease to boast a pre-eminence over animals that are unpolluted by our crimes.