"I believe that there were never so many thinking upon the subject, never were thoughts more nearly right on the great question of Liberty. I do not disesteem the political & Commercial aspects of Slavery. Its evils in these regards are greater than any of us imagine. But it is the Moral Condition of the slave & the effect of the system upon the Conscience of the Nation, that I chiefly feel & deprecate. One thing is certain. Let the friends of freedom, those who have no honors to seek, no offices to crave, no ambition to mislead them, let such become if possible more undoubtedly determined to press this reform by every legitimate means, and twenty Compromises upheld by a hundred times as many debauched statesman will not be able to long resist the current of things." He wrote this just before the inauguration of James Buchanan, who defeated the abolitionist Republican nominee James Fremont.