ntiment as unrighteous
beyond measure, and the holy and the just of the whole earth say in
regard to it, Anathema-maranatha.

What is slavery? Too well do I know what it is. I will present to you a
bird's-eye view of it; and it shall be no fancy picture, but one that is
sketched by painful experience. I was born among the cherished
institutions of slavery. My earliest recollections of parents, friends,
and the home of my childhood are clouded with its wrongs. The first
sight that met my eyes was a Christian mother enslaved by professed
Christians, but, thank God, now a saint in heaven. The first sounds that
startled my ear, and sent a shudder through my soul, were the cracking
of the whip and the clanking of chains. These sad memories mar the
beauties of my native shores, and darken all the slave-land, which, but
for the reign of despotism, had been a paradise. But those shores are
fairer now. The mists have left my native valleys, and the clouds have
rolled away from the hills, and Maryland, the unhonored grave of my
fathers, is now the free home of their liberated and happier children.

Let us view this demon, which the people have worshiped as a God. Come
forth, thou grim monster, that thou mayest be critically examined! There
he stands. Behold him, one and all. Its work is to chattelize man; to
hold property in human beings. Great God! I would as soon attempt to
enslave Gabriel or Michael as to enslave a man made in the image of God,
and for whom Christ died. Slavery is snatching man from the high place
to which he was lifted by the hand of God, and dragging him down to the
level of the brute creation, where he is made to be the companion of the
horse and the fellow of the ox.

It tears the crown of glory from his head, and as far as possible
obliterates the image of God that is in him. Slavery preys upon man, and
man only. A brute cannot be made a slave. Why? Because a brute has not
reason, faith, nor an undying spirit, nor conscience. It does not look
forward to the future with joy or fear, nor reflect upon the past with
satisfaction or regret. But who in this vast assembly, who in all this
broad land, will say that the poorest and most unhappy brother in chains
and servitude has not every one of these high endowments? Who denies it?
Is there one? If so, let him speak. There is not one; no, not one.

But slavery attempts to make a man a brute. It treats him as a beast.
Its terrible work is not finished until th