And this is independent of the question whether Congress, by the constitution, has any more right to establish slavery any where than it has to establish an inquisition, create an order of nobility, or anoint a king.

I cannot forbear to add, that it is a case, also, which, in some of its aspects, touches the deepest and tenderest sympathies of the human heart; for this prosecution not only deals with human beings as offenders, but with human beings and…

Our persons are near to each other; but should I not greatly deceive myself, were I to suppose that our opinions were as near together as our persons?

We are within shaking-hands’ distance of each other; still, our convictions and sentiments on certain subjects may be wide asunder as the poles.

On a subject of vast importance and gravity,--a subject reflected from every feature of this case,--I was born, and from my birth have been trained up, in one set of ideas; and I mean no discourtesy when I say that you have been born and…

Hence it is natural, yes, it is inevitable,--is it not?--that we should approach this subject with widely different views, and, as it were, from opposite points of the moral compass.

And of all difficult positions in which advocate or orator was ever placed, the most difficult is that of encountering the honest antipathies of his hearers.

The heart, secure in its own convictions, closes itself against the argument that would overthrow them, as a fond parent bars his doors against the foe that would carry away his children.

But, gentlemen, amid all these adverse circumstances, and amid these conflicts of hostile and perhaps irreconcilable feelings, is there not some common ground on which you and I can stand together, and greet each other as brethren?

In this case, I have certain duties to perform; you, too, have certain duties to perform; and the feeling of a common duty is always creative of the feeling of brotherhood.

From this moment, then, let all feelings of alienation or repugnance be banished from between us.

We shall prove to you that he is a man of sober and industrious life, against whose character, as a just, upright, exemplary citizen, no charge was ever before preferred.

Whatever may have been his errors in regard to the transaction which has brought him before you, he has, in consequence of it, passed through scenes which must move your sympathy.

He has been torn from his family and immured in a loathsome cell.

From feeling that sense of security from lawless violence, which every man, whether guilty or innocent, is entitled to feel, he has been in imminent danger of being torn in pieces by an infuriated mob.

If not, then there is another clause in the constitution set at nought,--that clause which declares that no person shall be “subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.

To proceed, therefore, after a finding for one offence, to charge the prisoner with the other, was not only a legal absurdity, but a grievous injustice.

Even, therefore, if it were just to charge the prisoner with the breach of two different laws for the same act, still, as the transportation of the whole was but one, it should have been charged only in one indictment.

Far graver consequences than the mere expenditure of money are involved.

Who can maintain or survive a contest against such a host of indictments, sustained by all the power and resources of the government?

Were he innocent as a child unborn, still, on the mere doctrine of chances, he might fail in some one case, out of such a multitude.

Were he in the prime of life, its setting sun might go down in darkness and sorrow before the final verdict of acquittal could be pronounced in his favor.

Could it have foreseen such an abuse as this, it would have provided a statute of limitations against the number of prosecutions for a single offence; for the government might as well try a man, on a separate indictment, for each hair of a…

But, gentlemen, there is another aspect of this case, which presents, in a manner still more glaring, the enormity of the proceeding to which we are subjected.

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