ke forth the unanimous
and decisive answer: Amen--such truths we do indeed hold to be
self-evident. And animated and sustained by a declaration, so
inspiring and sublime, they rushed to arms, and as the result of
agonizing efforts and dreadful sufferings, achieved under God the
independence of their country. The great truth, whence they derived
light and strength to assert and defend their rights, they made the
foundation of their republic. And in the midst of this republic,
must we prove, that He, who was the Truth, did not contradict
"the truths" which He Himself; as their Creator, had made
self-evident to mankind?

Is Jesus Christ in favor of American slavery? What, according to
those laws which make it what it is, is American slavery? In the
Statute-book of South Carolina thus it is written:[1] "Slaves shall
be deemed, held, 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, construction
and purposes whatever." The very root of American slavery consists
in the assumption, that law has reduced men to chattels. But this
assumption is, and must be, a gross falsehood. Men and cattle are
separated from each other by the Creator, immutably, eternally, and
by an impassable gulf. To confound or identify men and cattle must
be to lie most wantonly, impudently, and maliciously. And must we
prove, that Jesus Christ is not in favor of palpable, monstrous
falsehood?

[Footnote 1: Stroud's Slave Laws, p. 23.]

Is Jesus Christ in favor of American slavery? How can a system,
built upon a stout and impudent denial of self-evident truth--a
system of treating men like cattle--operate? Thomas Jefferson shall
answer. Hear him. "The whole commerce between master and slave is a
perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most
unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on
the other. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the
lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller
slaves, gives loose to his worst passions, and thus nursed, educated,
and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with
odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy, who can retain his
manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances."[2] Such is the
practical operation of a system, which puts men and cattle into the
same family and treats them alike. And must we prove