o call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can
command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery--the great sin and
shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use
the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape
me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who
is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
{351}

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this
circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a
favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and
denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would
be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there
is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would
you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this
country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man?
That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders
themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government.
They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the
slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the state of Virginia, which, if
committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him
to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will
subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the
acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible
being. The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact
that southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding,
under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or
write. When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts
of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When
the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on
your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall
be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with
you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro
race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting,
and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses,
constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron,
copper, silver, and gold; that, while we ar