mark out. They may, as they have done, effect great mischief, but
they can not be made to maintain, in the long run, dominion over reason
and common sense, nor ultimately put down what God has ordained.

You deny, however, that slavery is sanctioned by God, and your chief
argument is, that when he gave to Adam dominion over the fruits of the
earth and the animal creation, he stopped there. "He never gave him any
further right over his fellow-men." You restrict the descendants of Adam
to a very short list of rights and powers, duties and responsibities, if
you limit them solely to those conferred and enjoined in the first
chapter of Genesis. It is very obvious that in this narrative of the
Creation, Moses did not have it in view to record any part of the law
intended for the government of man in his social or political state. Eve
was not yet created; the expulsion had not yet taken place; Cain was
unborn; and no allusion whatever is made to the manifold decrees of God
to which these events gave rise. The only serious answer this argument
deserves, is to say, what is so manifestly true, that God's not
expressly giving to Adam "any right over his fellow-men" by no means
excluded him from conferring that right on his descendants; which he in
fact did. We know that Abraham, the chosen one of God, exercised it and
held property in his fellow-man, even anterior to the period when
property in land was acknowledged. We might infer that God had
authorized it. But we are not reduced to inference or conjecture. At the
hazard of fatiguing you by repetition, I will again refer you to the
ordinances of the Scriptures. Innumerable instances might be quoted
where God has given and commanded men to assume dominion over their
fellow-men. But one will suffice. In the twenty-fifth chapter of
Leviticus, you will find _domestic slavery--precisely such as is
maintained at this day in these States--ordained and established by God,
in language which I defy you to pervert so as to leave a doubt on any
honest mind that this institution was founded by him, and decreed to be
perpetual_. I quote the words:

Leviticus xxv. 44-46: "Both thy bond-men and thy bond-maids which thou
shalt have, shall be of the heathen [Africans] that are round about you:
of _them ye shall buy bond-men and bond-maids_.

"Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you,
of them shall ye buy, _and of their families that are with you which
they begat in