Status Updates From A Defense of Virginia and t...

“a commonwealth without a single weak, or selfish, or bad man, is a Utopia” (54)

"The pious 'Puritan Fathers' found it convenient to assume that they were God's chosen Israel, and the pagans about them were Amalek and Amorites.... hence deduced their righteous title to exterminate or enslave the Indians.... The ministers and magistrates solemnly authorized the enslaving of the wives and posterity of their enemies for the crimes of the fathers and husbands in daring to defend their own soil" (37)

"For, unfortunately, the human race is a fallen race—depraved, selfish, unrighteous and oppressive, under all institutions. Out of the best social order, committed to such hands, there still proceeds a hideous amount of wrongs and woe; and that, not because the order is unrighteous, but because it is administered by depraved man." (28)

"subjugated nations ... receive at the hands of their conquerors this crowning woe—a depraved, cringing, and cowardly spirit. The wisest, kindest, most patriotic thing which any man can do for his country, amidst such calamities, is to aid in preserving and reinstating the tottering principles of his countrymen; to teach them ... to abate nothing of righteous convictions and of self-respect."