y class of persons in this country may desire to obtain.
But I am here to say that I think the term slavery is sometimes abused
by identifying it with that which it is not. Slavery in the United
States is the granting of that power by which one man exercises and
enforces a right of property in the body and soul of another. The
condition of a slave is simply that of the brute beast. He is a piece
of property--a marketable commodity, in the language of the law, to be
bought or sold at the will and caprice of the master who claims him to
be his property; he is spoken of, thought of, and treated as property.
His own good, his conscience, his intellect, his affections, are all set
aside by the master. The will and the wishes of the master are the law
of the slave. He is as much a piece of property as a horse. If he is
fed, he is fed because he is property. If he is clothed, it is with a
view to the increase of his value as property. Whatever of comfort is
necessary to him for his body or soul that is inconsistent with his
being property, is carefully wrested from him, not only by public
opinion, but by the law of the country. He is carefully deprived of
everything that tends in the slightest degree to detract from his
value as property. He is deprived of education. God has given him an
intellect; the slaveholder declares it shall not be cultivated. If
his moral perception leads him in a course contrary to his value
as property, the slaveholder declares he shall not exercise it. The
marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one-sixth of the
population of democratic America is denied its privileges by the law
of the land. What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty,
boasting of its humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its
love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three
millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?--what must be
the condition of that people? I need not lift up the veil by giving you
any experience of my own. Every one that can put two ideas together,
must see the most fearful results from such a state of things as I
have just mentioned. If any of these three millions find for themselves
companions, and prove themselves honest, upright, virtuous persons to
each other, yet in these{319} cases--few as I am bound to confess they
are--the virtuous live in constant apprehension of being torn asunder
by the merciless men-stealers that claim them a