Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/321

Rh could get another bale of cotton, nor a box of sugar, nor anything to carry from or to any Southern port." In politics, almost all the leading men have been servants of slavery. Three "major prophets" of the American Republic have gone home to render their account where "the servant is free from his master, and the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." Clay, Calhoun, Webster; they were all prophets of slavery, all against freedom. No men of high political standing and influence have ever lived in this country who were fallen so low in the mire of slavery as they during the last twenty years. No political footprints have sunk so deep into the soil—all their tracks run towards bondage. Where they marched, slavery followed.

Our Presidents must all be pro-slavery men. John Quincy Adams even, the only American politician, thus far, who inherited a great name and left it greater, as President did nothing against slavery that has yet come to light; said nothing against it which has yet come to light. The brave old man, in his latter days, stirred up the nobler nature in him, and amply repaid for the sins of omission. But the other Presidents, a long line of them—Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison,—they are growing smaller and smaller,—Tyler, Polk, Taylor, who was a brave, earnest man, and had a great deal of good in him,—and now they began rapidly to grow very small,—Fillmore, Pierce—can you find a single breath of freedom in these men? Not one. The last slave President, though his cradle was rocked in New Hampshire, is Texan in his latitude. He swears allegiance to slavery in his inaugural address.

Is there a breath of freedom in the great federal officers—secretaries, judges? Ask the Cabinet; ask the supreme court; the federal officers. They are, almost without exception, servants of slavery. Out of forty thousand government officers to-day, I think thirty-seven thousand are strongly pro-slavery ; and of the three thousand who are at heart anti-slavery, we have yet to listen long before we shall hear the first anti-slavery lisp. I have been listening ever since the fourth of March, 1853, and have not heard a word yet. In the English Cabinet there are various opinions on important matters; here the administration is