Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader · Chapter 58=65.= an Appeal to Arms
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Rouse, brave citizens! Do your duty like men; and be persuaded that Divine Providence will not permit this western world to be involved in the horrors of slavery. Consider that, from the earliest ages of the world, religion, liberty, and reason have been bending their course towards the setting sun. The holy Gospels are yet to be preached to these western regions; and we have the highest reason to believe that the Almighty will not suffer slavery and the gospel to go hand in hand. It cannot, it will not be.
But if there be any among us dead to all sense of honor and love of their country; if deaf to all the calls of liberty, virtue, and religion; if forgetful of the magnanimity of their ancestors, and the happiness of their children; if neither the examples nor the success of other nations, the dictates of reason and of nature, or the great duties they owe to their God, themselves, and their posterity have any effect upon them; if neither the injuries they have received, the prize they are contending for, the future blessings or curses of their children, the applause or the reproach of all mankind, the approbation or displeasure of the great Judge, or the happiness or misery consequent upon their conduct, in this and a future state can move them,—then let them be assured that they deserve to be slaves, and are entitled to nothing but anguish and tribulation…. Let them forget every duty, human and divine, remember not that they have children, and beware how they call to mind the justice of the Supreme Being.
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=Alexander Hamilton, 1757-1804.= (Manual, pp. 484, 486.)
From "Vindication of the Funding System."