more addicted to Slavery. This hypothesis does not seem very likely to be adopted.
III. Shall Slavery destroy Freedom? It looks very much like it. Here are nine great steps, openly taken since '87, in favour of Slavery. First, America put Slavery into the Constitution. Second, out of old soil she made four new slave States. Third, America, in 1793, adopted Slavery as a Federal institution, and guaranteed her protection for that kind of property as for no other. Fourth, America bought the Louisiana territory in 1803, and put Slavery into it. Fifth, she thence made Louisiana, Missouri, and then Arkansas slave States. Sixth, she made Slavery perpetual in Florida. Seventh, she annexed Texas. Eighth, she fought the Mexican war, and plundered a feeble sister republic of California, Utah, and New Mexico, to get more slave soil. Ninth, America gave ten millions of money to Texas to support Slavery, passed the Fugitive Slave Bill, and has since kidnapped men in "New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, in all the East, in all the West, in all the Middle States. All the great cities have kidnapped their own citizens. Professional slave-hunters are members of New England churches; kidnappers sit down at the Lord's table in the city of Cotton, Chauncey, and Mayhew. In this very year, before it is half through, America has taken two more steps for the destruction of Freedom. The repeal of the Missouri compromise and the enslavement of Nebraska : that is the tenth step. Here is the eleventh: The Mexican treaty, giving away ten millions of dollars and buying a little strip of worthless land, solely that it may serve the cause of Slavery.
Here are eleven great steps openly taken towards the ruin of liberty in America. Are these the worst? Very far from it! Yet more dangerous things have been done in secret.
I. Slavery has corrupted the mercantile class. Almost all the leading merchants of the North are pro-Slavery men. They hate freedom, hate your freedom and mine! This is the only Christian country in which commerce is hostile to freedom.
