nor because
they deny that slaves are legally property; for this obvious truth they
do not deny. But you prefer it, because they believe that man cannot
rightfully be a subject of property.

Abolitionists believe, to use words, which I have already quoted, that
it is "a wild and guilty phantasy, that man can hold property in man."
They believe, that to claim property in the exalted being, whom God has
made in His own image, and but "a little lower than the angels," is
scarcely less absurd than to claim it in the Creator himself. You take
the position, that human laws can rightfully reduce a race of men to
property; and that the outrage, to use your own language, is "sanctioned
and sanctified" by "two hundred years" continuance of it. Abolitionists,
on the contrary, trace back man's inalienable self-ownership to
enactments of the Divine Legislator, and to the bright morning of time,
when he came forth from the hand of his Maker, "crowned with glory and
honor," invested with self-control, and with dominion over the brute and
inanimate creation. You soothe the conscience of the slaveholder, by
reminding him, that the relation, which he has assumed towards his
down-trodden fellow-man, is lawful. The abolitionist protests, that the
wickedness of the relation is none the less, because it is legalized. In
charging abolitionists with condemning "the rights of property," you
mistake the innocent for the guilty party. Were you to be so unhappy as
to fall into the hands of a kidnapper, and be reduced to a slave, and
were I to remonstrate, though in vain, with your oppressor, who would
you think was the despiser of "the rights of property"--myself, or the
oppressor? As you would judge in that case, so judges every slave in his
similar case.

The man-stealer's complaint, that his "rights of property" in his stolen
fellow men are not adequately respected by the abolitionist, recalls to
my mind a very similar, and but little more ludicrous case of
conscientious regard for the "rights of property." A traveler was
plundered of the whole of his large sum of money. He pleaded
successfully with the robber for a little of it to enable him to reach
his home. But, putting his hand rather deeper into the bag of stolen
coins than comported with the views of the robber, he was arrested with
the cry, "Why, man, have you no conscience?" You will perhaps inquire,
whether abolitionists regard all the slaves of the South as stolen--as
well those b