Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States. Letter to Robert J. Evans (1819)
Let every declamation turn upon the beauty of liberty and virtue, and the deformity, turpitude, and malignity, of slavery and vice. A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Let us see delineated before us the true map of man. Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God—that consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust, as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest or happiness. Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)