As a result this liberal-minded man was naturally opposed to slavery.  He was as outspoken a champion of freedom as lived in America in his day.  “Slavery in the South,” said he, “is an evil that calls for national reform and repentance.”  He thought that this “national scourge in this world” might “be antidoted before the storm” gathered and burst.[8] “As all men are created equal and independent by God of Nature,” contended he, “Slavery must have Moral Evil for its foundation, seeing it violates the Law of Nature, as established by its author.”  “Ambition and avarice on the one hand,” thought he, “and social dependence upon the other, affords the former an opportunity of being served at the expense of the latter and this unnatural state of things hath been exemplified in all countries, and all ages of the world from time immemorial.”  He further said, “Pride and vain glory on the one side, and degradation and oppression on the other creates on the one hand a spirit of contempt, and on the other a spirit of hatred and revenge, preparing them to be dissolute:  and qualifying them for every base and malicious work!” He believed that “the mind of man is ever aspiring for a more exalted station; the consequence is the better slaves used the more saucy and impertinent they become:  of course the practice must be wholly abolished or the slaves must be governed with absolute sway.”  He had discovered that “the exercise of an absolute sway over others begets an unnatural hardness which as it becomes imperious contaminates the mind of the governor; while the governed becomes factious and stupefied like brute beasts, which are kept under by a continual dread and hence whenever the subject is investigated, the evils of despotism presents to view in all their odious forms.” [9]

His attack on slavery, however, was neither so general nor universal as would be expected of such a radical.  He saw that “there is a distinction admissible in some cases, between Slavery itself and the spirit of slavery.”  “A man may possess slaves by inheritance or some other way; and may not have it in his power either to liberate them or to make better their circumstances, being trammelled by the Laws and circumstances of the country,—­yet whilst he feels a sincere wish to do them all the justice he can.”  He remarked too that “we have no account of Jesus Christ saying one word about emancipation.  Onesimus ran away from Philemon to Rome; whence finding Paul, whom he had seen at his master’s, he experienced religion, and was sent back by the apostle with a letter—­but not a word about setting him free."[10]