the World's Emancipator, for he hath declared
that men belong to _Him_; and an oppressor thus becomes a felon, a
robber, and a wronger of God, in the person of every poor and wretched
victim!

A Christianity that tells man what his origin is--of God; his destiny,
to God again; his errand on earth, to grow toward goodness, and make
the most of himself--this Christianity is rank rebellion in
despotisms, and insurrection on plantations. It cannot be preached
there.

These two radical theories of man--man, a physical creature to be
judged by effects produced in Time; or man, a spiritual creature, to
be judged by the development to which he is destined, are at the root
of all the antagonisms between the spirit of northern and southern
institutions: northern policy and southern policy. In the North, it is
the public sentiment of the people, that all men are born free and
equal; that every man has an inalienable right to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness, forfeited only by _crime_. The North believe
that personal and political liberty are not only _rights_ of man, but
their _necessity_, that man cannot thrive nor develop, with the true
proportions of manhood, without liberty. It is the northern sentiment
that a man must be prepared for liberty, and that the act of _birth_
is that preparation; that no creature lives which is the better for
oppression, and who will not be the better for freedom, which is the
natural air appointed for the soul's breathing. The North disdains
every pretense that men are injured by sudden liberty. A famished man
may injure himself by over-feeding; but that is an argument not
against food, but against famine. It is the northern sentiment, and
justly deduced from the Christian theory of man, that society should
redeem all its own children from ignorance, should secure their
growth, equip them for citizenship, make all the influences of society
enure to the benefit of the mass of men. The southern sentiment is the
reverse of this. It holds that all men are not born free and equal;
that men have not an inalienable right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness; and that men are not in their very constitution
fitted for liberty, and benefited by it. They hold that liberty is an
attribute of power; that it is a blossom which belongs to _races_, and
not to mankind; that a part were born to rule, and a part were
ordained to serve; that liberty is dangerous to the many; that
servitude, the