The late JUDGE TUCKER of Virginia, a slaveholder, and Professor of Law in the University of William and Mary, in his “Letter to a Member of the Virginia Legislature,” 1801, says,—­

“I say nothing of the baneful effects of slavery on our moral character, because I know you have been long sensible of this point.”

The Presbyterian Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, consisting of all the clergy of that denomination in those states, with a lay representation from the churches, most, if not all of whom are slaveholders, published a report on slavery in 1834, from which the following is an extract.

“Those only who have the management of servants, know what the hardening effect of it is upon their own feelings towards them. There is no necessity to dwell on this point, as all owners and managers fully understand it.  He who commences to manage them with tenderness and with a willingness to favor them in every way, must be watchful, otherwise he will settle down in indifference, if not severity."

GENERAL WILLIAM H. HARRISON, now of Ohio, son of the late Governor Harrison of Virginia, a slaveholder, while minister from the United States to the Republic of Colombia, wrote a letter to General Simon Bolivar, then President of that Republic, just as he was about assuming despotic power.  The letter is dated Bogota, Sept. 22, 1826.  The following is an extract.

“From a knowledge of your own disposition and present feelings, your excellency will not be willing to believe that you could ever be brought to an act of tyranny, or even to execute justice with unnecessary rigor.  But trust me, sir, there is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature than the exercise of unlimited power.  The man, who in the beginning of such a career, might shudder at the idea of taking away the life of a fellow-being, might soon have his conscience so seared by the repetition of crime, that the agonies of his murdered victims might become music to his soul, and the drippings of the scaffold afford blood to swim in.  History is full of such excesses.”

WILLIAM H. FITZHUGH, Esq. of Virginia, a slaveholder, says,—­“Slavery, in its mildest form, is cruel and unnatural; its injurious effects on our morals and habits are mutually felt."

HON.  SAMUEL S. NICHOLAS, late Judge of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, and a slaveholder, in a speech before the legislature of that state, Jan. 1837, says,—­

“The deliberate convictions of the most matured consideration I can give the subject, are, that the institution of slavery is a most serious injury to the habits, manners and morals of our white population—­that it leads to sloth, indolence, dissipation, and vice.”

Dr. THOMAS COOPER, late President of the College of South Carolina, in a note to his edition of the “Institutes of Justinian” page 413, says,—­