As early as 1830 Dr. E.S. Gannett said that "the greatest evil under which our nation labors is the existence of slavery. It is the only vicious part of our body politic, but this is a deep and disgusting sore. It must be treated with the utmost judgment and skill." The violence of the abolitionists he did not approve, however; for his respect for law and constituted authority was so great that he was not ready for radical measures. He abhorred slavery, but he was not willing to condemn the slaveholder. He was therefore regarded by the abolitionists as more hostile to them than any other Unitarian minister. His attitude as a peace man, his strong regard for justice and fair dealing, as well as his earnest faith in the gentle influence of the gospel, forbade his accepting the strenuous methods of the abolitionists. He would not, however, permit anti-slavery ministers to be silenced in Unitarian meetings. When he saw something of slavery, in 1833, he expressed his convictions in regard to it in these forcible words: "It is the attempt to degrade a human being into something less than a man,--not the confinement, unjust as this is, nor the blows, cruel as these are,--but the denial of his equal share in the rights, prerogatives, and responsibilities of a human being, which brands the institution of slavery with its peculiar and ineffaceable odiousness."[27] Another minister who came under the condemnation of the abolitionists was Rev. John H. Morison, and yet he preached sermons against slavery that met with the vigorous disapproval of his congregation. "We all agree," he wrote in 1844, "in the sad conviction that slavery in its political influence, more than all other subjects, threatens to upturn the foundation of our government; that in its moral and religious bearings it is a grievous wrong to master and slave; and that, as it is in violation of the fundamental principles of Christian duty, it must, if continued beyond the absolute necessity of the case, be attended with consequences the most disastrous." Again, when Daniel Webster made his 7th of March speech in 1850, Dr. Morison, then the editor of The Christian Register, took the earliest possible opportunity to express himself as strongly as he could against it. "We at the North," he wrote, "believe that slavery is morally wrong." He said that the government, in its attempt to defend slavery as against the moral convictions of a large number of the people, was doing the country a great harm.[28]