11 quotes
Slavery is, as you justly complain, a sad blot on our free country.
Letter to Lafayette (1821)
Where slavery exists, the republican theory becomes still more fallacious.
The great evil under which the nation labors.
We have seen the mere distinction of color made, in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.
Another of my wishes is to depend as little as possible on the labor of slaves.
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)
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)
The blot on our Republican character.
It must not be so; because we intend this Constitution to be the great charter of Human Liberty to the unborn millions who shall enjoy its protection, and who should never see that such an institution as slavery was ever known in our midst.
The Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)
[I]n proportion as slavery prevails in a State, the Government, however democratic in name, must be aristocratic in fact.
I have long thought that our vacant territory was the resource which, in some mode or other, was most applicable and adequate as a gradual cure for the portentous evil; without, however, being unaware that even that would encourage serious difficulties of different sorts.