Slavery

The first question to be proposed by a rational being is not what is profitable but what is Right. Duty must be primary prominent most conspicuous among the objects of human thought and pursuit. If we cast it down from its supremacy if we inquire first for our interests and then for our duties we shall certainly err. We can never see the Right clearly and fully but by making it our first concern. No judgment can be just or wise but that which is built on the conviction of the paramount worth and importance of Duty. This is the fundamental truth the supreme law of reason; and the mind which does not start from this in its inquiries into human affairs is doomed to great perhaps fatal error. The Right is the supreme good and includes all other goods. In seeking and adhering to it we secure our true and only happiness. All prosperity not founded on it is built on sand. If human affairs are controlled as we believe by Almighty Rectitude and Impartial Goodness then to hope for happiness from wrong doing is as insane as to seek health and prosperity by rebelling against the laws of nature by sowing our seed on the ocean or making poison our common food. There is but one unfailing good; and that is fidelity to the Everlasting Law written on the heart and rewritten and republished in God''s Word. Whoever places this faith in the everlasting law of rectitude must of course regard the question of slavery first and chiefly as a moral question. All other considerations will weigh little with him compared with its moral character and moral influences. The following remarks therefore are designed to aid the reader in forming a just moral judgment of slavery. Great truths inalienable rights everlasting duties these will form the chief subjects of this discussion. There are times when the assertion of great principles is the best service a man can render society. The present is a moment of bewildering excitement when men''s minds are stormed and darkened by strong passions and fierce conflicts; and also a moment of absorbing worldliness when the moral law is made to bow to expediency and its high and strict requirements are decried or dismissed as metaphysical abstractions or impracticable theories. At such a season to utter great principles without passion and in the spirit of unfeigned and universal good-will and to engrave them deeply and durably on men''s minds is to do more for the world than to open mines of wealth or to frame the most successful schemes of policy.