Even if alone, my feeble arm should not be wanting as a bar against this outrage.

Secondly, I arraign it in the name of Freedom, as an unjustifiable departure from the original Antislavery policy of our fathers.

Slavery is the forcible subjection of one human being, in person, labor, and property, to the will of another.

In this simple statement is involved its whole injustice.

Without a father, without a mother, almost without a God, the slave has nothing but a master.

It would be contrary to that Rule of Right which is ordained by God, if such a system, though mitigated often by patriarchal kindness, and by plausible physical comfort, could be otherwise than pernicious.

And now, Sir, when the conscience of mankind is at last aroused to these things, when, throughout the civilized world, a slave-dealer is a by-word and a reproach, we, as a nation, are about to open a new market to the traffickers in flesh…

Such an act, at this time, is removed from all reach of that palliation often vouchsafed to Slavery.

This wrong, we are speciously told by those who seek to defend it, is not our original sin.

It was entailed upon us, so we are instructed, by our ancestors; and the responsibility is often thrown, with exultation, upon the mother country.

Here is a fresh case of actual transgression, which we cannot cast upon the shoulders of any progenitors, nor upon any mother country, distant in time or place.

Historic instances show how such an act will make us solitary among the nations.

Thus Russia speaks for Freedom, and disowns the slaveholding dogma of our country.

India, the land of caste, and Turkey, the abode of polygamy, both fasten upon Slavery the stigma of reprobation.

The primal truth of the Equality of Men, proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence, is assailed, and this Great Charter of our country discredited.

Diversity is the law of creation, unrestricted to race or color.

It is clear, beyond dispute, that by the overthrow of this Prohibition Slavery will be quickened, and slaves themselves will be multiplied, while new room and verge will be secured for the gloomy operations of Slave Law, under which free…

Human rights, whether in a multitude or the solitary individual, are entitled to equal and unhesitating support.

And now, Sir, in the name of that Public Faith which is the very ligament of civil society, and which the great Roman orator tells us it is detestable to break even with an enemy, I arraign this scheme, and hold it up to the judgment of…

I begin, Sir, by assuming that honorable Senators will not act in this spirit,--that they will not wantonly and flagitiously discard any obligation, pledge, or covenant, because they chance to possess the power,--that they will not…

In its stipulations for Slavery, it was justly repugnant to the conscience of the North, and ought never to have been made; but on that side it has been performed.

But this extraordinary lapse of time, with the complete fruition by one party of all the benefits belonging to it under the compact, gives to the transaction an added and most sacred strength.

Death, with inexorable scythe, has mowed down the authors of this compact; but, with conservative hour-glass, the dread destroyer has counted out a succession of years, which now defile before us, like so many sentinels, to guard the…

If we meet upon principles of reciprocity, we cannot fail to do justice to all.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.