“I tell you, in the first instance, that Ireland is an enslaved country. A great mistake is entertained by many persons to the effect that there cannot be slavery—that no man can be a slave unless he be in chains, or subject to the lash of the planter like the negroes; but the slavery of which I speak is the slavery of the people, which consists in this, that they do not make their own laws themselves—that they do not make the laws by which they are governed, but that those laws are made by others, and I say it boldly, that a people so circumstanced are in a state of slavery.”

2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the Human Story
Context: But one may ask, how is it that slavery, or any other form of invidious discrimination, has played so great a role in American history? How could a nation, dedicated at its birth to the proposition that all men are created equal, have tolerated slavery and its effects so long? If we look to the long history of mankind, however, we will ask a different question. Slavery was lawful in every one of the original thirteen states. There was accordingly nothing remarkable in the fact that slavery was not abolished immediately on independence. What is remarkable is that a slave-owning nation would declare that all men are created equal, and thereby make the abolition of slavery a moral and political necessity. To accomplish that task would not be easy. We need to see the dimensions of that task to appreciate its difficulty.

"The Address of the Southern and Western Liberty Convention" http://alexpeak.com/twr/libertyparty/saw/, in Anti-slavery Addresses of 1844 and 1845 by Salmon Portland Chase and Charles Dexter Cleveland, ed. C. D. C. (London: Sampson Low, Son, and Martson, 1867), pp. 75–125.

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Q&A

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 178

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)
Context: Our fathers, therefore, were fully alive to the scope of their words and their work; and thus, as I believe, the Constitution of the United States, in its essential spirit and intention, recognizes the essential manhood of Dred Scott as absolutely as it does that of the President, of the Chief Justice, or of any Senator of the United States. I think I have not unfairly stated the spirit of the age, the sentiments of the fathers, and the original doctrine of this government upon the question of slavery. The system was recognized by law, but it was considered an evil which Time was surely removing. And, as if to put this question at rest forever, to show that the framers of this government did not look forward to a continuance of slavery, Mr. Stephens of Georgia, the most sagacious of the living slavery leaders, says, in June of this year, 'The leading public men of the South, in our early history, were almost all against it. Jefferson was against it. This I freely admit, when the authority of their names is cited. It was a question which they did not, and perhaps could not, thoroughly understand at that time'.

Beckwith v. Wood and another (1817), 2 Starkie, 266.

1820, as quoted in John Adams https://web.archive.org/web/20111029143754/http://home.nas.com/lopresti/ps2.htm, by Page Smith, Doubleday, Garden City, New York
1820s
Context: I shudder when I think of the calamities which slavery is likely to produce in this country. You would think me mad if I were to describe my anticipations… If the gangrene is not stopped I can see nothing but insurrection of the blacks against the whites.

1790s, First Principles of Government (1795)
Context: The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.