s of property, and hence, he has to struggle within
himself and sets about arguing himself into the belief that slavery is
right. The property influences his mind. The dissenting minister who
argued some theological point with one of the established church was
always met with the reply, "I can't see it so." He opened a Bible and
pointed him a passage, but the orthodox minister replied, "I can't see
it so." Then he showed him a single word--"Can you see that?" "Yes, I see
it," was the reply. The dissenter laid a guinea over the word and asked,
"Do you see it now?" So here. Whether the owners of this species of
property do really see it as it is, it is not for me to say, but if they
do, they see it as it is through two thousand millions of dollars, and
that is a pretty thick coating. Certain it is that they do not see it
as we see it. Certain it is that this two thousand millions of dollars,
invested in this species of property, all so concentrated that the mind
can grasp it at once--this immense pecuniary interest--has its influence
upon their minds.

But here in Connecticut and at the North slavery does not exist, and we
see it through no such medium.

To us it appears natural to think that slaves are human beings; men,
not property; that some of the things, at least, stated about men in
the Declaration of Independence apply to them as well as to us. I say we
think, most of us, that this charter of freedom applies to the slaves as
well as to ourselves; that the class of arguments put forward to batter
down that idea are also calculated to break down the very idea of a free
government, even for white men, and to undermine the very foundations of
free society. We think slavery a great moral wrong, and, while we do not
claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a
wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it. We think that
a respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God
that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will
properly reach it. We think that species of labor an injury to free white
men--in short, we think slavery a great moral, social, and political
evil, tolerable only because, and so far as, its actual existence makes it
necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that it ought to be treated as a
wrong.

Now these two ideas, the property idea that slavery is right, and the
idea that it is wrong, come into collision, and do actually