King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men
should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for
suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain
this execrable commerce."

Though this clause was omitted from the document as finally
adopted, the evidence is abundant that the language expressed the
prevailing sentiment of the country. To the believer in liberty
and equality, slavery and the slave-trade are instances of war
against human nature. No one attempted to justify slavery or to
reconcile it with the principles of free government. Slavery was
accepted as an inheritance for which others were to blame.
Colonists at first blamed Great Britain; later apologists for
slavery blamed New England for her share in the continuance of
the slave-trade.

The fact should be clearly comprehended that the sentiments which
led to the American Revolution, and later to the French
Revolution in Europe, were as broad in their application as the
human race itself--that there were no limitations nor exceptions.
These new principles involved a complete revolution in the
previously recognized principles of government. The French sought
to make a master-stroke at immediate achievement and they
incurred counterrevolutions and delays. The Americans moved in a
more moderate and tentative manner towards the great achievement,
but with them also a counter-revolution finally appeared in the
rise of an influential class who, by openly defending slavery,
repudiated the principles upon which the government was founded.

At first the impression was general, in the South as well as in