The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 7.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

‘Chains clank and groans echo around the walls of their spotless Congress.’¹

‘Man to be possessed by man! Man to be made property of The image of the Deity to be put under the yoke Let these usurpers show us their title-deeds!’²

‘When I am indulging in my views of American prospects and American liberty, it is mortifying to be told that in that very country a large portion of the people are slaves! It is a dark spot on the face of the nation. Such a state of things cannot always exist.’³

“ I deem it right to raise my humble voice to convince the citizens of America that the slaveholding states are held in abomination by all those whose opinion ought to be valuable. Man is the property of man in about one half of the American States: let them not therefore dare to prate of their institutions or of their national freedom, while they hold their fellow-men in bondage! Of all men living, the American citizen who is the owner of slaves is the most despicable. He is a political hypocrite of the very worst description. The friends of humanity and liberty in Europe should join in one universal cry of shame on the American slave-holders ‘Base wretches!’ should we shout in chorus; ‘base wretches! how dare you profane the temple of national freedom, the sacred fane of republican rites, with the presence and the sufferings of human beings in chains and slavery!’

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Daniel O'Connell.

4. Because it subjects one portion of our American