one hair's breadth from the grand old safeguard would I step. Under the
Constitution I believe slavery to be a purely local institution. In
Louisiana and Texas, a slave is an immovable by statute, and is annexed
to the realty as hop-poles are in the law of New York. In Alabama and
Mississippi, the slave is a chattel. In the first-named States he passes
by deed of national act and registration; in the other, by simple
receipt or delivery. Thus even among slave States there is no uniform
system respecting the slave property. To the Northern States the slave
is a person in his ballot relation to congressional quota and
constituency, and also an apprentice to labor, to be delivered up on
demand. The slave escaping from Maryland to Pennsylvania is not to be
delivered up, nor cared about, nor thought about, until he is demanded.
Liberty is the law of nature. Every man is presumed free in choice, and
not even to be trammeled by apprenticeship, until the contrary is made
clearly to appear. One man may be a New York discharged convict, for
instance--an unpardoned convict. He emigrates southward, he obtains
property, according to local law, in a slave. The slave escapes to New
York. The convict--unpardoned--master enters the tribunal there on his
demand. Quoth the escaped apprentice, producing the record of the
conviction, 'Mr. Claimant, you have no standing in court. Your civil
rights are suspended in this State until you are pardoned. You are _not_
pardoned, therefore I will not answer aye or no to your claim, until you
are legitimately in court, and recognized by the judges.' I take it that
plea would avail. And if the crier wanted to employ a person to sweep
the court-room the next moment, he could employ that defendant to do it.
There is not a man in the rebel States (_whom we publicly know of_) who
has a standing under the Constitution regarding this slavery question.
By his own argument he lives in a foreign country; by our own argument
he is not _rectus in curia_. Were I an invading general and wanted
horses, I would decoy them from the rebels with hay and stable
enticements. If I wanted trench-diggers, camp scullions, or
artillerists, or pilots, or oarsmen, or guides, and, being that general,
saw negroes about me, I should press them into my service. Time enough
to talk about the rights of some one to possess the negroes by better
claim of title to service when that somebody, with the Constitution in
one hand and stipula