_Resolve_, That the institution of slavery except in punishment of crime is a great moral, social and political evil; that it was so regarded by the fathers of the republic, the founders and best friends of the Union, by the heroes and sages of the Revolution who contemplated and intended its gradual and peaceful extinction as an element hostile to the liberties for which they toiled; that its history in the United States, the experience of men best acquainted with its workings, the dispassionate confession of those who are interested in it; its tendency to relax the vigor of industry and enterprise inherited in the white man; the very surface of the earth where it subsists; the vices and immoralities which are its natural growth; the stringent police, often wanting in humanity and revolting to the sentiments of every generous heart, which it demands; the danger it has already wrought and the future danger which it portends to the security of the Union and our constitutional liberties--all incontestably prove it to lie such evil. Surely that institution is not to be strengthened and encouraged against which Washington, the calmest and wisest of our nation, bore unequivocal testimony; as to which Jefferson, filled with a love of liberty, exclaimed: "Can the liberties of a nation be ever thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that their liberties are THE GIFT OF GOD; that they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble, for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; that, considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest!" And as to which another eminent patriot in Virginia, on the close of the Revolution, also exclaimed: "Had we turned our eyes inwardly when we supplicated the Father of Mercies to aid the injured and oppressed, when we invoked the Author of Righteousness to attest the purity of our motives and the justice of our cause, and implored the God of battles to aid our exertions in its defense, should we not have stood more self-convicted than the contrite publican?" We believe these sentiments to be as true now as they were then.