"_Are these people_ MEN?" he said; "that is the question. If they are _men_, it will not do to make them instruments for mere convenience,--for the mere tillage of the soil;--if they are _men_, it is not enough to say that they have a sort of animal freedom from care, and joyance of spirits. If they are _men_, they are to be cultivated; their faculties are to be regarded as precious; they are to be improved.... If he is a _man_, then he is not only improvable and ought to be improved, but he _will improve_ in spite of all we can do." And a great deal more to the same effect. He indignantly protested against treating "an intelligent creature, a fellow-being, a brother-man, a being capable of indefinite expansion and immortal progress," as one would treat a tree, a flower, an ox, or a horse. "Grant that the African of the present generation cannot be raised to our stature; yet if in the course of ages he may be, and if it is our policy systematically to arrest or to retard his growth, does the case materially differ from what I have supposed?" Namely that of a child. Dr. Dewey visited slave-States and talked with slave-holders in order to make himself fully acquainted with the condition of opinion and of feeling about the case, and he took occasion everywhere to argue the Northern side. This ought to be enough in the way of vindication of his personal sentiments. At the same time, he was a Unionist of the Webster school. His attachment to the Union was intense. Disunion in his judgment meant ceaseless discord, the end of republican institutions, the arrest of civilization, the indefinite postponement of progress, the hopelessness of education and uplifting for the slave, the withdrawal of Northern influence, the final overthrow of government by moral powers. A long reign of anarchy, in the course of which the lovers of the race must see their visions of good disappear, would supervene, and this he could not contemplate with equanimity.