Slavery, unquestionably, should be abolished, particularly in this country; because it is inconsistent with the declared principles of the American Revolution. The sooner, therefore, we set about it, the better. Either we should set our slaves at liberty, immediately, and colonize them in the western territory;[5] or we should immediately take measures for the gradual abolition of it, so that it may become a known, and fixed point, that ultimately, universal liberty, in these united states, shall triumph.--This is the least we can do in order to evince our sense of the irreparable outrages we have committed, to wipe off the odium we have incurred, and to give mankind a confidence again in the justice, liberality, and honour of our national proceedings. It would not be difficult to show, were it necessary, that America would soon become a richer and more happy country, provided the step was adopted. That corrosive anguish of persevering in anything improper, which now embitters the enjoyments of life, would vanish as the mist of a foggy morn doth before the rising sun; and we should find as great a disparity between our present situation, and that which would succeed to it, as subsists between a cloudy winter, and a radiant spring.--Besides, our lands would not be then cut down for the support of a numerous train of useless inhabitants--useless, I mean, to themselves, and effectually to us, by encouraging sloth and voluptuousness among our young farmers and planters, who might otherwise know how to take care of their money, as well as how to dissipate it.--In all other respects, I conceive them to be as valuable as we are--as capable of worthy purposes, and to possess the same dignity that we do, in the estimation of providence; although the value of their work apart, for which we are dependent on them, we generally consider them as good for nothing, and accordingly, treat them with greatest neglect. But be it remembered, that this cause is the cause of heaven; and that the father of them as well as of us, will not fail, at a future settlement, to adjust the account between us, with a dreadful attention to justice. Othello Baltimore, May 10, 1788. --_American Museum_, IV, 412-415. ESSAY ON NEGRO SLAVERY _No. II_ Upon no better principle do we plunder the coasts of Africa, and bring away its wretched inhabitants as slaves than that, by which the greater fish swallows up the lesser. Superior power seems only to produce superior brutality; and that weakness and imbecility, which ought to engage our protection, and interest the feelings of social benevolence in behalf of the defenceless, seems only to provoke us to acts of illiberal outrage and unmanly violence.