To drive coffles of slaves from here to Oregon, in the middle of the nineteenth century, is more infamous than it was to bring cargoes of slaves from Africa here, in the middle of the eighteenth.

How often have we at the north been told that we were inciting insurrection, fomenting a servile war, putting the black man’s knife to the white man’s throat.

But if they now insist upon perpetrating against the whole western world, which happens at present to be under our control, the same wrongs which, in darker days, Great Britain perpetrated against them, they will forfeit every claim to…

Let not southern men, who would now force slavery upon new regions, ever deny that their slavery at home is a chosen, voluntary, beloved crime.

It is proposed not merely to continue this institution where it now exists, but to extend it to the Pacific Ocean,--to spread it over the vast slopes of the Rocky Mountains.

If, therefore, there is any ingredient of wrong in this institution, we ought not to adopt it, or to permit it, even though it should pour wealth in golden showers over the whole surface of the land.

Jurists, from the time of Justinian; orators, from the time of Cicero; poets, from the time of Homer, declare it to be wrong.

The writers on moral or ethical science,--the expounders of the law of nations and of God,--denounce slavery as an invasion of the rights of man.

They find no warrant for it in the eternal principles of justice and equity; and in that great division which they set forth between right and wrong, they arrange slavery in the catalogue of crime.

All the noblest instincts of human nature rebel against it.

Whatever has been taught by sage, or sung by poet, in favor of freedom, is a virtual condemnation of slavery.

Whenever we applaud the great champions of liberty, who, by the sacrifice of life in the cause of freedom, have won the homage of the world and an immortality of fame, we record the testimony of our hearts against slavery.

Wherever patriotism and philanthropy have glowed brightest; wherever piety and a devout religious sentiment have burned most fervently, there has been the most decided recognition of the universal rights of man.

I deny the right of the captor to the life of his captive; and even if this right were conceded, I deny his right to the life of the captive’s offspring.

But this relation between captor and captive precludes the idea of peace; for no peace can be made where there is no free agency.

Hence, the state of slavery is a state of war; and though active hostilities may have ceased, they are liable to break out, and may rightfully break out, at any moment.

Does not the gentleman know that, by the same authority, the Israelitish slaves were commanded to despoil their Egyptian masters, and to escape from bondage?

What should we think, sir, of a teacher for our children, or even of a tender of our cattle, who did not recognize the difference between men and mules,--between humanity and horse-flesh?

No, sir; all the legislation of the slave states proves that they do not treat, and cannot treat, a human being as an animal.

I will show that they are ever trying to degrade him into an animal, although they can never succeed.

This conscious idea that the state of slavery is a state of war,--a state in which superior force keeps inferior force down,--develops and manifests itself perpetually.

It exhibits itself in the statute books of the slave states, prohibiting the education of slaves, making it highly penal to teach them so much as the alphabet; dispersing and punishing all meetings where they come together in quest of…

Look into the statute books of the free states, and you will find law after law, encouragement after encouragement, to secure the diffusion of knowledge.

Yet here, in what we call republican America, are fifteen great states, vying with each other to see which will bring the blackest and most impervious pall of ignorance over three millions of human beings; nay, which can do most to stretch…

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