The principles, the feelings, of our common nature rise in rebellion against it.

Looking carefully at Slavery as it is, we find that it is not merely a single gross pretension, utterly inadmissible, but an aggregation of gross pretensions, all and each utterly inadmissible.

It begins with the kidnapper in Guinea or Congo, traverses the sea with the pirate slave-trader in his crowded hold, and is continued here by virtue of laws representing and embodying the same brutal force that prevailed in the kidnapper…

Slavery, wherever it exists, is the triumph of force, sometimes in the strong arm of an individual, and sometimes in the strong arm of law, but in principle always the same.

Depending upon force, he is master who happens to be stronger,--so that, if the slave were stronger, he would be master, and the master would be slave.

Beyond all doubt, according to reason and justice, every slave possesses the same right to enslave his master that his master possesses to enslave him.

If this simple statement of unquestionable principles needed confirmation, it would be found in the solemn judgments of courts.

Such obedience is the consequence only of uncontrolled authority over the body.

Here in the national capital, under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress, the FORCE which now maintains this unnatural system is supplied by Congress.

Without Congress the “uncontrolled authority” of the master would cease.

Without Congress the master would not be master, nor would the slave be slave.

Congress, then, in existing legislation, is the power behind, which enslaves our fellow-men.

Therefore does it behoove Congress, by proper, instant action, to relieve itself of this painful responsibility.

Situated within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Constitution, where State rights cannot prevail, it exists in open defiance of most cherished principles.

Let the Constitution be rightly interpreted by a just tribunal, and Slavery must cease here at once.

The decision of a court would be as potent as an Act of Congress.

Although applied at the time only to the Territories, it is of equal force everywhere within the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress; for within such jurisdiction there is no atmosphere in which Slavery can live.

But we may learn to detest Slavery still more, when we see how completely it instals itself here in utter disregard of the Constitution, compelling Congress ignobly to do its bidding.

When and by what process did the National Government, solemnly pledged to Freedom, undertake to maintain the Slave-Master here in the exercise of that force, or “unrestrained power” which swings the lash, fastens the chain, robs the wages…

Such was one of the earliest victories of Slavery in the name of “Compromise.” It is difficult to estimate the evil consequences thus entailed upon the country.

Slavery cannot exist without barbarous laws in its support.

And yet it is by virtue of this colonial statute, with all its ancillary barbarism, adopted by Congress, that slaves are still held at the national capital.

But all these musty, antediluvian, wicked statutes, of which you have seen a specimen, took their place at once in the national legislation, and under their supposed authority slaves multiplied, and Slavery became a national institution.

And it now continues only by virtue of this Slave Code borrowed from early colonial days, which, though flagrantly inconsistent with the Constitution, has never yet been repudiated by Court or Congress.

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