sons. They
have a system of local legislation on which slavery rests; while
everybody agrees that it is against natural law, or at least against the
common understanding which prevails among men as to what is natural law.

I am not going into metaphysics, for therein I should encounter the
honorable member from South Carolina,[3] and we should find "no end, in
wandering mazes lost," until after the time for the adjournment of
Congress. The Southern States have peculiar laws, and by those laws
there is property in slaves. This is purely local. The real meaning,
then, of Southern gentlemen, in making this complaint, is, that they
cannot go into the territories of the United States carrying with them
their own peculiar local law, a law which creates property in persons.
This, according to their own statement, is all the ground of complaint
they have. Now here, I think, gentlemen are unjust towards us. How
unjust they are, others will judge; generations that will come after us
will judge. It will not be contended that this sort of personal slavery
exists by general law. It exists only by local law. I do not mean to
deny the validity of that local law where it is established; but I say
it is, after all, local law. It is nothing more. And wherever that local
law does not extend, property in persons does not exist. Well, Sir, what
is now the demand on the part of our Southern friends? They say, "We
will carry our local laws with us wherever we go. We insist that
Congress does us injustice unless it establishes in the territory in
which we wish to go our own local law." This demand I for one resist,
and shall resist. It goes upon the idea that there is an inequality,
unless persons under this local law, and holding property by authority
of that law, can go into new territory and there establish that local
law, to the exclusion of the general law. Mr. President, it was a maxim
of the civil law, that, between slavery and freedom, freedom should
always be presumed, and slavery must always be proved. If any question
arose as to the _status_ of an individual in Rome, he was presumed to be
free until he was proved to be a slave, because slavery is an exception
to the general rule. Such, I suppose, is the general law of mankind. An
individual is to be presumed to be free, until a law can be produced
which creates ownership in his person. I do not dispute the force and
validity of the local law, as I have already said; but I say, it is