He was one of the earliest of the public men of the North to discover and to point out the tendency of this agitation. That he denounced it boldly and sincerely cannot be denied, even by those who may not have held, or who do not now hold, the same opinions concerning the “abolitionists” and their measures. He endeavored, at an early period, to keep his own State of Pennsylvania free from the adoption of such dogmas as the “higher law,” and to have its people appreciate the mischiefs which the anti-slavery societies were producing in the South. It is easy to impute this course to his political relations to the Democratic party and to the dictates of his own ambition as one of its principal Northern leaders, who, in any future prospect of political honors beyond those which his own State could bestow, might have to look to Southern support. But is there no sensible, patriotic, sound and unselfish motive, no honest and well grounded conviction, discoverable in what he did and said? If his opinions about this agitation were substantially in accordance with those of wise and judicious men, who could not have been influenced by party spirit or personal objects, they may claim to have been sincere and just, as certainly as they may claim to have been courageously uttered. It will not be doubted that when the abolition agitation began, there was at least one man in the North, who, from his deep and fervid interest in whatever concerned the rights of human nature and the welfare of the human race, from his generous love of liberty and his philanthropic tendencies, might be expected to welcome any rational mode of removing the reproach and the evil of slavery from the American name and the condition of American society. Such a man was that celebrated New England divine, William Ellery Channing. What his feelings were about the slavery that existed in our Southern States, all who know anything of his character and his writings know full well. His position as a clergyman and his relations to the moral and spiritual condition of the age, put out of the question the possibility of any political motive, other than that broad, high and comprehensive view of public policy which was above all the interests of party, and beyond all personal considerations. If such a man foresaw the dangerous tendencies of the abolition agitation, conducted in and from the North, and at the same time discovered that the evil of slavery ought to be and might be dealt with in a very different spirit and by far other means, it is rational to conclude that men in public life and in political positions might well place themselves in opposition to the spread of such principles and the adoption of such methods as those of the anti-slavery societies of the North. It was, in truth, the one thing which it was their duty, as statesmen, to do.[62] Footnote 62: