Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · August 11, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 31

THESE men sworn to a solemn trust, to support the Constitution of the United States, have been threatened, cajoled, persuaded, into proving false to that trust and the shameful achievement is hailed by the Christian Statesman as “the greatest moral victory since emancipation.” The truth is that as emancipation gave freedom from physical enslavement to eight millions of blacks so this marks the beginning of the governmental enslavement of the consciences of sixty-five millions of all colors and races now resident in the United States, and the millions yet to come. Instead of the two things—emancipation of the colored race and the passage of religious legislation by Congress—being parallel moral measures, they are complete antitheses. The first echoed the constitutional principle of the natural freedom and equality of all men and established civil liberty; but the last contravenes the Constitution and natural right, and establishes civil inequity and religious despotism. The first removed from the Constitution its only inconsistency and did away with the shame of the Nation; the last is an irremediable blot upon the proceedings of the national Legislature, and puts disgrace upon a free people.