7949. SLAVERY, Political error of.—
Whatever may have been the circumstances
which influenced our forefathers to permit the
introduction of personal bondage into any part
of these States, and to participate in the wrongs
committed on an unoffending quarter of the
globe, we may rejoice that such circumstances,
and such a sense of them, exist no longer. It
is honorable to the nation at large that their
Legislature availed themselves of the first practicable
moment for arresting the progress of
this great moral and political error.—
R. to A. of Quakers. Washington ed. viii, 119.
(Nov. 1807)
