No one can understand the effect of the unutterable meanness of the slave system on the minds of those who, but for the strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling the degradation of not being gentlemen enough to pay for services…

When Slavery is seen to be the Barbarism which it is, there are few who would not cover it from sight, rather than insist upon sending it abroad with the flag of the Republic.

Only because people have been insensible to its true character have they tolerated for a moment its exorbitant pretensions.

On the one side is a human being, and on the other side a thing.

But the very idea of a human being necessarily excludes the idea of property in that being, just as the very idea of a thing necessarily excludes the idea of a human being.

And the law itself, when it adopts the phrase, “relation of master and slave,” confesses its reluctance to sanction the claim of property.

It shrinks from the pretension of Senators, and satisfies itself with a formula which does not openly degrade human nature.

Under what ordinance of Nature or of Nature’s God is one human being stamped an owner and another stamped a thing?

Where is the sanction for this respect of certain persons to a degree which becomes outrage to other persons?

Where, then, is the sanction of this pretension by which a brother lays violent hands upon a brother?

To ask these questions is humiliating; but it is clear there can be but one response.

Is it reasonable, in the exercise of a just discretion, to separate descendants of the African race from white children merely in consequence of descent?

Thus, in every department connected with our Common Schools, throughout the whole hierarchy of their government, from the very head of the system down to the humblest usher in the humblest Primary School, and to the humblest voter, there…

It is when we reach the last stage of all, the children themselves, that the beautiful character of the system is changed to the deformity of Caste, as, in the picture of the ancient poet, what above was a lovely woman terminated below in…

But the Committee cannot assume, a priori, and without individual examination, that all of an entire race are so deficient in proper moral and intellectual qualifications as to justify their universal degradation to a class by themselves.

Such an exercise of discretion must be unreasonable, and therefore illegal.

But there cannot be one law for the country and another for Boston.

But if separate colored schools are illegal and impossible in the country, they must be illegal and impossible in Boston.

Boston cannot do indirectly what other towns cannot do directly.

We have already seen that it is the occasion of inconvenience to colored children, which would not arise, if they had access to the nearest Common School, besides compelling parents to pay an additional tax, and inflicting upon child and…

Still further,--and this consideration cannot be neglected,--the matters taught in the two schools may be precisely the same, but a school exclusively devoted to one class must differ essentially in spirit and character from that Common…

They have an equal right with white children to the Common Schools.

A separate school, though well endowed, would not secure to them that precise Equality which they would enjoy in the Common Schools.

It is possible that their accommodations are as good as they would be able to occupy, if left free to choose throughout Rome and Frankfort; but this compulsory segregation from the mass of citizens is of itself an inequality which we…

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