Whilst we were offering up vows at the shrine of Liberty, and sacrificing hecatombs upon her altars; whilst we swore irreconcilable hostility to her enemies, and hurled defiance in their faces; whilst we adjured the God of Hosts to witness our resolution to live free or die, and imprecated curses on their heads who refused to unite with us in establishing the empire of freedom; we were imposing upon our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery, ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions, of which we complained. Such are the inconsistencies of human nature; such the blindness of those who pluck not the beam out of their own eyes, whilst they can espy a moat, in the eyes of their brother: such that partial system of morality which confines rights and injuries, to particular complexions; such the effect of that selflove which justifies, or condemns, not according to principle, but to the agent.
St. George Tucker, A Dissertation on Slavery: With a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it, in the State of Virginia (1796).
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St. George Tucker
