Enslave a man, and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity.

In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one’s condition is the mainspring of effort.

The first touch of slavery snaps this spring.

The slave does not participate in the value of the wealth he creates.

A free man labors, not only to improve his own condition, but to better the condition of his children.

The mighty impulse of parental affection repays for diligence, and makes exertion sweet.

The slave’s heart never beats with this high emotion.

However industrious and frugal he may be, he has nothing to bequeath to his children,--or nothing save the sad bonds he himself has worn.

When he moves his tardy limbs, it is because of the suffering that goads him from behind, and not from the bright prospects that beckon him forward in the race.

What would a slave owner at the south think, should he come to Massachusetts, and there see a farmer seize upon his hired man, call in a surgeon, and cut off all the flexor muscles of his arms and legs?

I do not ask what he would think of his humanity, but what would he think of his sanity?

Yet the planter does more than this when he makes a man a slave.

He cuts deeper than the muscles; he destroys the spirit that moves the muscles.

In all ages of the world, among all nations, wherever the earnings of the laborer have been stolen from him, his energies have gone with his earnings.

Under the villeinage system of England, the villeins were a low, idle, spiritless race; dead to responsibility; grovelling in their desires; resistant of labor; without enterprise; without foresight.

If a tenant is to be no better off for the improvements he makes on an estate, he will not make the improvements.

Look at the seigniories of New York,--the anti-rent districts as they are now called;--every man acquainted with the subject knows that both people and husbandry are half a century behind the condition of contiguous fee-simple…

All history illustrates the principle, that when property is insecure, it will not be earned.

If a despot can seize and confiscate the property of his subject at pleasure, the subject will not acquire property, and thereby give to himself the conspicuousness that invites the plunder.

Who does not know that a slave, who can rationally hope to purchase his freedom, will do all the work he ever did before, and earn his freedom-money besides?

Slavery, therefore, though claiming to be a kind of property, is the bane of property; and the more slaves there are found in the inventory of a nation’s wealth, the less in value will the aggregate of that inventory be.

This is one of the reasons why slave labor is so much less efficient than free labor.

The former can never compete with the latter; and while the greater service is performed with cheerfulness, the smaller is extorted by fear.

Just as certain as that the locomotive can outrun the horse, and the lightning outspeed the locomotive, just so certain is it that he who is animated by the hopes and the rewards of freedom will outstrip the disheartened and fear-driven…

So far from facilitating the increase of individual or national wealth, slavery retards both.