When this declaration, particularly this clause of it, was reported in heaven, (and I presume to believe that the sun had not set on the fourth of July, 1776, before the transactions of the American Congress were published to the celestial hosts,) what think you were the expectations of angels and the spirits of just men made perfect, with respect to the state of things which would succeed in this nation? Doubtless, the former, in whose respective ranks _liberty_ and _equality_ are not only _professed_ but _practised_, expected, upon their first mission to this lower world, to see the American people, without distinction of complexion or circumstances, enjoying the blessings of freedom. And with equal probability may we imagine, that those happy souls who had been redeemed from the earth, and who had here witnessed, with their own eyes, the oppressions of man exercised upon his own species; some of whom had, perhaps, themselves been personally guilty in this matter, and had found, from their own experience, that the last pollution, from which a Saviour’s blood can wash the human soul, is the sweat or blood of a black man’s body; I say, we may safely imagine, that, among these, there was one universal shout of joy. They rejoiced to hear, that, in one nation at least of this fallen world, after the lapse of almost 6000 years, THE RIGHTS OF MAN were at last understood, and a solemn resolution to respect them had been unanimously adopted: that universal emancipation had been proclaimed to three millions of the human family. In view of these considerations, could angels and redeemed souls have reasonably expected or believed, _if there is any sincerity in man_, that from the benefits of this solemn declaration, adopted under all the solemn circumstances just mentioned, and with the most solemn appeal to heaven, _every sixth man_ was excluded, and _doomed to perpetual slavery_; and _that_, for no other reason, than because the God of nature had caused them to be born in a torrid clime, where the sun had burnt their skin and crisped their hair, and they had been transported against their will, to a land inhabited by white men?