[Footnote 13: Madison Papers, p. 1589.]
This language may sound harsh to the ears of those who think it a part of their duty, as citizens, to maintain that whatever the patriots of the Revolution did, was right; and who hold that we are bound to do all the iniquity that they covenanted for us that we should do. But the claims of truth and right are paramount to all other claims.
With all our veneration for our constitutional fathers, we must admit,—for they have left on record their own confession of it,—that in this part of their work they intended to hold the shield of their protection over a wrong, knowing that it was a wrong. They made a “compromise” which they had no right to make—a compromise of moral principle for the sake of what they probably regarded as “political expediency.” I am sure they did not know—no man could know, or can now measure, the extent, or the consequences of the wrong that they were doing. In the strong language of JOHN QUINCY ADAMS,[14] in relation to the article fixing the basis of representation, “Little did the members of the Convention, from the free States, imagine or foresee what a sacrifice to Moloch was hidden under the mask of this concession.”
[Footnote 14: See his Report on the Massachusetts Resolutions.]
I verily believe that, giving all due consideration to the benefits conferred upon this nation by the Constitution, its national unity, its swelling masses of wealth, its power, and the external prosperity of its multiplying millions; yet the moral injury that has been done, by the countenance shown to slavery; by holding over that tremendous sin the shield of the Constitution, and thus breaking down in the eyes