The government thus organized was Anti-slavery in character.  Washington was a slave-holder, but it would be unjust to his memory not to say that he was an Abolitionist also.  His opinions do not admit of question.

* * * * *

By the side of Washington, as, standing beneath the national flag, he swore to support the Constitution, were illustrious men, whose lives and recorded words now rise in judgment.  There was John Adams, the Vice-President, great vindicator and final negotiator of our national independence, whose soul, flaming with Freedom, broke forth in the early declaration, that “consenting to Slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust,” and whose immitigable hostility to this wrong is immortal in his descendants.  There was also a companion in arms and attached friend, of beautiful genius, the yet youthful and “incomparable” Hamilton,—­fit companion in early glories and fame with that darling of English history, Sir Philip Sidney, to whom the latter epithet has been reserved,—­who, as member of the Abolition Society of New York, had recently united in a solemn petition for those who, though “free by the laws of God; are held in Slavery by the laws of this State.”  There, too, was a noble spirit, of spotless virtue, the ornament of human nature, who, like the sun, ever held an unerring course,—­John Jay.  Filling the important post of Secretary for Foreign Affairs under the Confederation, he found time to organize the “Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves” in New York, and to act as its President, until, by the nomination of Washington, he became Chief Justice of the United States.  In his sight Slavery was an “iniquity,” “a sin of crimson dye,” against which ministers of the Gospel should testify, and which the Government should seek in every way to abolish.  “Till America comes into this measure,” he wrote, “her prayers to Heaven for liberty will be impious.  This is a strong expression, but it is just.  Were I in your legislature, I would prepare a bill for the purpose with great care, and I would never cease moving it till it became a law or I ceased to be a member.”  Such words as these, fitly coming from our leaders, belong to the true glories of the country: 

    “While we such precedents can boast at home,
     Keep thy Fabricius and thy Cato, Rome!”

They stood not alone.  The convictions and earnest aspirations of the country were with them.  At the North these were broad and general.  At the South they found fervid utterance from slaveholders.  By early and precocious efforts for “total emancipation,” the author of the Declaration of Independence placed himself foremost among the Abolitionists of the land.  In language now familiar to all, and which can never die, he perpetually denounced Slavery.  He exposed its pernicious influence upon master as well as slave, declared that the love of justice and the love of country pleaded equally for the slave, and that “the