United States'
service. In half a score of cases since the last war, Congress has
rejected such applications for compensation. Besides, both in
Congressional acts, and in our national diplomacy, slaves and property
are not used as convertible terms. When mentioned in treaties and state
papers it is in such a way as to distinguish them from mere property,
and generally by a recognition of their _personality_. In the invariable
recognition of slaves as _persons_, the United States' constitution
caught the mantle of the glorious Declaration, and most worthily wears
it.--It recognizes all human beings as "men," "persons," and thus as
"equals." In the original draft of the Declaration, as it came from the
head of Jefferson, it is alleged that Great Britain had "waged a cruel
war against _human_ nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of
life and liberty in the persons of a distant people, carrying them into
slavery, * * determined to keep up a market where MEN should be bought
and sold,"--thus disdaining to make the charter of freedom a warrant for
the arrest of _men_, that they might be shorn both of liberty and
humanity.

The celebrated Roger Sherman, one of the committee of five appointed to
draft the Declaration of Independence, and also a member of the
Convention that formed the United States' Constitution, said, in the
first Congress after its adoption: "The constitution _does not consider
these persons_, (slaves,) _as a species of property_."--[Lloyd's Cong.
Reg. v. 1, p. 313.] That the United States' Constitution does not make
slaves "property," is shown in the fact, that no person, either as a
citizen of the United States, or by having his domicile within the
United States' government, can hold slaves. He can hold them only by
deriving his power from _state_ laws, or from the law of Congress, if he
hold slaves within the District. But no person resident within the
United States' jurisdiction, and _not_ within the District, nor within a
state whose laws support slavery, nor "held to service" under the laws
of such state or district, having escaped therefrom, _can be held as a
slave_.

Men can hold _property_ under the United States' government though
residing beyond the bounds of any state, district, or territory. An
inhabitant of the Wisconsin Territory can hold property there under the
laws of the United States, but he cannot hold _slaves_ there under the
United States' laws, nor by virtue of the United