104 quotes
It would be a blot and stigma on your otherwise spotless escutcheon, not to restore to your slaves that liberty and those rights which you have been through life so zealous and able a champion.
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize, every expanded prospect.
What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty & Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support?
We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society, and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance.
Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785)
The danger of disturbing the public tranquillity by interesting too strongly the public passions, is a still more serious objection against a frequent reference of constitutional questions to the decision of the whole society.
Federalist Papers (1787)
Liberate and make soldiers at once of the blacks... It would certainly be more consonant to the principles of liberty which ought never to be lost sight of in a contest for liberty...
Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions agst. danger real or pretended from abroad.
I scarcely express myself too strongly in saying, that any allusion in the Convention to the subject you have so much at heart would have been a spark to a mass of gunpowder.
Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.
Mr. MADISON considered the popular election of one branch of the National Legislature as essential to every plan of free Government.
The Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)
I do not mean to discuss the question how far slavery and farming are incompatible. Our opinions agree as to the evil, moral, political, and economical, of the former.
Letter to F. Corbin (1820)
The papers inclosed will shew that the nauseous project of amendments has not yet been either dismissed or despatched. We are so deep in them now, that right or wrong some thing must be done.
In every political society, parties are unavoidable. A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of them. The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all.
The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.
Twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves. So long a term will be more dishonorable to the National character than to say nothing about it in the Constitution.
The Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)
It has been said that America is a country for the poor, not for the rich. There would be more correctness in saying it is the country for both ... but, proportionally, more for the former than for the latter.
During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785)
[P]ower, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
The blot on our Republican character.
To be consistent with existing and probably unalterable prejudices in the U. S. the freed blacks ought to be permanently removed beyond the region occupied by or allotted to a White population.
Letter to Robert J. Evans (1819)