Discourse on Slavery and the Annexation of Texas Page: 3 of 19
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DI SO UR SE.
ECCLESIASTES vii. 7. Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad.
THAT is, it stirreth him to vehement indignation; and, I
suppose, there was never a truer word spoken of human nature
than that. There is in oppression, a wrong beyond every other
wrong. There is a drop of bitterness in that cup like to none
other; and he who forces it to my lips and compels me to drink
it, must stir in my bosom an indignation which no other infliction
can provoke, for he does me an injustice and a dishonor
which no other injury can equal. I can bear every thing but
that, with comparative equanimity. To be robbed and despoiled,
on the highway on in my own dwelling; to be circumvented and
cheated in trade; to be slandered by the breath of malice which
poisons the whole atmosphere of life; these lhings, no doubt, it
is hard enough to endure. To be struck to the earth by a blow
given in fair fight, is a sufficient mortification and calamity. But
he who crushes me to the earth, and then sets his foot upon my
neck, and holds me there at his will, puts upon me an affront, an
indignity, which no philosophy, no religion-which nothing but
utter baseness can make tolerable. My physical power to resist
may be broken down to passive endurance, but so long as there
is a drop of human blood in my veins it will throb and burn
with indignation at such a wrong. Make man a brute and he
may consent to be the victim of another's power; but so sure
as he rises to the feeling of what his manhood is, will he spend
the last failing energy of his life to break the accursed chain.
So long as the heart of the world is not dead, will it cry out
against oppression. From the beginning of the world has this
monster sin existed; but by all free and noble spirits from the
beginning of the world has it been regarded as the monster-sin.
The awful tyrannies of the earth, Assyrian, Egyptian, Roman,
Feudal, have crushed millions beneath them, but they have
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Dewey, Orville. Discourse on Slavery and the Annexation of Texas, book, January 1, 1844; New York. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth2359/m1/3/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.