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These significant words are inscribed upon the scroll of our nation’s history, and there they will remain till time shall be no longer. They need no glossary or explanation. He who runs may read them, and he who reads can understand them. The sentiment they embody it is impossible to mistake; it stands out in bold relief, like the sun in the heavens. It is, that every man has received, from a higher than earthly power, a charter, which secures to him the unalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is impossible for the most ultra advocate of “human rights” to paraphrase these words, or give them a rendering so as to make them support his dogmas more strongly than they now do. On the contrary, he would only weaken their force by the attempt.

Now, my dear brother, I would candidly, seriously ask you–I would ask all your southern friends–I would ask everybody, Can the sentiment of that Declaration be consistent with American slavery? Are not slaves men? Do color and degradation change a creature of God from a human being to a soulless brute? No; our southern brethren would as indignantly repudiate this infidel view as we at the North. Now if a slave is a man, he has received from his Creator an unalienable right to liberty if he chooses to avail himself of it, or else the first principle laid down in our revered Declaration of Independence, so far from being “self evident,” is in fact untrue, and ought at once to be taken from its honored position in the archives of these United States, and consigned to the heaps of rubbish of the dark ages.

But does the slave enjoy this liberty? or is it within his reach? It will not be pretended. The very name by which his class is designated forbids it. The term free slave is a solecism. His liberty consists in the freedom to do as he is told to do, or suffer punishment for his disobedience, and he can pursue happiness only in accordance with the will of his master.

There is the same incongruity between slavery and that clause in our constitution which stipulates that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Now, my brother, does it not require considerable ingenuity and special pleading to avoid conclusions to which unbiased common sense would arrive in an instant, in the application of these declared rights to persons held as slaves? I am not going to inflict upon you a dissertation, or a series of syllogisms on this hackneyed subject, but I beg that you and your friends will calmly look again at what, I doubt not, you have seen before,–the palpable incongruity between the system of holding persons perpetually in slavery without their consent, and those declared, self-evident, heaven bestowed, unalienable rights professedly secured to all men in these United States by our glorious constitution. Said that great statesman and patriot, Henry Clay: “We present to the world the sorry spectacle of a nation that worships Slavery as a household goddess, after having constituted Liberty the presiding divinity over church and state.”

Surely something must be out of joint here. I have looked again and again at this matter, I think with perfect candor, and I have tried to the utmost of my ability to reconcile these apparent inconsistencies, but I cannot do it. Can you?

Believe me, as ever, your sincere friend and

CHRISTIAN BROTHER.

LETTER IV.

SLAVERY TRANSFORMS MEN TO CHATTELS.–SOUTHERN LAWS.–SLAVE-AUCTIONS.–MEN PLACED ON A LEVEL WITH BRUTES.–NO REDRESS FOR WRONGS.–IGNORANCE PERPETUATED BY LAW.

MY DEAR CHRISTIAN FRIEND,–A second characteristic of American slavery is, It regards human beings, declared to be in the “image of God,” as “chattels,”–things or articles of merchandise. “Slaves,” say the laws of South Carolina and Georgia, “shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever.”[D] “A slave,” says the code of Louisiana, “is one who is in the power of his master, to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, and his labor; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any thing, but what must belong to his master.”[E]