nd of
property is--how shall we say it so as not to violate our Constitutional
obligations?--that it is exceptional. When it leaves Virginia, it is a
thing; when it arrives in Boston, it becomes a man, speaks human
language, appeals to the justice of the same God whom we all
acknowledge, weeps at the memory of wife and children left behind,--in
short, hath the same organs and dimensions that a Christian hath, and
is not distinguishable from ordinary Christians, except, perhaps, by a
simpler and more earnest faith. There are people at the North who
believe that, beside _meum_ and _tuum_, there is also such a thing as
_suum_,--who are old-fashioned enough, or weak enough, to have their
feelings touched by these things, to think that human nature is older
and more sacred than any claim of property whatever, and that it has
rights at least as much to be respected as any hypothetical one of our
Southern brethren. This, no doubt, makes it harder to recover a
fugitive chattel; but the existence of human nature in a man here and
there is surely one of those accidents to be counted on at least as
often as fire, shipwreck, or the cattle-disease; and the man who
chooses to put his money into these images of his Maker cut in ebony
should be content to take the incident risks along with the advantages.
We should be very sorry to deem this risk capable of diminution; for we
think that the claims of a common manhood upon us should be at least as
strong as those of Freemasonry, and that those whom the law of man
turns away should find in the larger charity of the law of God and
Nature a readier welcome and surer sanctuary. We shall continue to
think the negro a man, and on Southern evidence, too, so long as he is
counted in the population represented on the floor of Congress,--for
three fifths of perfect manhood would be a high average even among
white men; so long as he is hanged or worse, as an example and terror
to others,--for we do not punish one animal for the moral improvement
of the rest; so long as he is considered capable of religious
instruction,--for we fancy the gorillas would make short work with a
missionary; so long as there are fears of insurrection,--for we never
heard of a combined effort at revolt in a menagerie. Accordingly, we do
not see how the particular right of whose infringement we hear so much
is to be made safer by the election of Mr. Bell, Mr. Breckinridge, or
Mr. Douglas,--there being quite as little chanc