e slaves now held
as such among us were not themselves feloniously seized on a foreign
soil, torn away from kindred, homes, and country, and sold into hopeless
bondage in a strange land; but their sires and grandsires were.
Man-stealing is confessedly the stock out of which has sprung, and grown
to its present dimensions, the vast and overshadowing Upas of American
slavery; and if the Bible brands that stock as pestiferous, must not the
entire tree partake of the noxious influence? Again: if, as competent
critics assert, the popular sense of the word rendered "men-stealers,"
in 1 Tim. i. 10, be "those who deal in men--literally, slave-traders,"
then trafficking in slaves for mercenary ends is, by Paul, ranked among
vices the most abominable; and American slavery is, if possible, more
pointedly condemned by that passage than by the statute found in Ex.
xxi. 16. For who does not know that trading in "the persons of men" has
ever been, and yet is, a main pillar in the fabric of slavery? Indeed,
man-stealing and slave-trading are to slave-holding precisely what the
business of the distiller and of the vendor is to the vice of
intemperance. There is, in either case, a trio of associated evils; and
it is difficult to say which member of either trio is the most repulsive
and harmful.

If, now, it be objected to this argument from the Bible, that the Mosaic
institutes expressly recognize such a thing as involuntary servitude,
and prescribe rules for its regulation, I answer: true, but the
servitude thus recognized and regulated by statute was of a far milder
type than that which is legalized in these American States. For, 1. It
allowed the bondman a large amount of leisure, or time which he need not
devote to his master's service; 2. It made it possible for him to
accumulate a considerable amount of property; 3. It placed him on a
perfect level with his master, in regard to religious privileges; 4. It
gave him his freedom whenever he should be so chastised as to result in
permanent injury to his person: thus operating as a powerful preventive
of inhumanity in chastising; 5. It respected the sanctity of the
conjugal and parental relations, when existing among bondmen, and did
not authorize a compulsory severing of family ties; 6. It made no
provision for the sale of a servant by his Jewish master, nor for any
such domestic commerce in the persons of men as is practised in the
southern States of this Union; 7. It provided for the