Prescient comments from John Adams, via Ken Burns Ep. 2

"If we must erect an independent government in America, a republic will produce strength, hardiness, activity, courage, fortitude and enterprise, but there is so much rascality, so much venality and corruption, so much avarice and ambition, such a rage for profit and commerce among all ranks and degrees of men even in America, that I sometimes doubt whether there is public virtue enough to support a republic." -John Adams

I need not remind readers that while Adams wasn't a formal abolitionist, he called slavery a "foul contagion" and an "evil of colossal magnitude." To the best of my knowledge, he and his son, John Quincy Adams were the only two of the first dozen POTUS who never owned slaves.