The Continental Congress, in 1775, setting forth the causes and the necessity for taking up arms, say:  “If it were possible for men who exercise their reason to believe that the Divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and unbounded power over others, marked out by infinite goodness and wisdom as objects of a legal domination, never rightfully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these colonies might at least require from the Parliament of Great Britain some evidence that this dreadful authority over them has been granted to that body.”

In 1776, the celebrated Dr. Hopkins, then at the head of New England divines, published a pamphlet entitled, “An Address to the owners of negro slaves in the American colonies,” from which the following is an extract:  “The conviction of the unjustifiableness of this practice (slavery) has been increasing, and greatly spreading of late, and many who have had slaves, have found themselves so unable to justify their own conduct in holding them in bondage, as to be induced to set them at liberty.  May this conviction soon reach every owner of slaves in North America! Slavery is, in every instance, wrong, unrighteous, and oppressive—­a very great and crying sin—­there being nothing of the kind equal to it on the face of the earth.”

The same year the American Congress issued a solemn MANIFESTO to the world.  These were its first words:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Once, these were words of power; now, “a rhetorical flourish.”

The celebrated Patrick Henry of Virginia, in a letter, of Jan. 18, 1773, to Robert Pleasants, afterwards president of the Virginia Abolition Society, says:  “Believe me, I shall honor the Quakers for their noble efforts to abolish slavery.  It is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion to show that it is at variance with that law that warrants slavery.  I exhort you to persevere in so worthy a resolution.”

In 1779, the Continental Congress ordered a pamphlet to be published, entitled, “Observations on the American Revolution,” from which the following is an extract:  “The great principle (of government) is and ever will remain in force, that men are by nature free; as accountable to him that made them, they must be so; and so long as we have any idea of divine justice, we must associate that of human freedom.  Whether men can part with their liberty, is among the questions which have exercised the ablest writers; but it is conceded on all hands, that the right to be free CAN NEVER BE ALIENATED—­still less is it practicable for one generation to mortgage the privileges of another.”