the slave
States. It has, with the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of
the House of Representatives, and the Clerks of both Houses, the army
and the navy; and the bureaus, have, I am told, about the same
proportion. One would suppose that, with all this power operating in
this Government, it would be content to _permit_--yes I will use the
word _permit_--it would be content to permit us, who live in the free
States, to enjoy our firesides and our homes in quietness; but this is
not the case. The slaveholders and slave laws claim that as property,
which the free States know only as persons, a reasoning property,
which, of its own will and mere motion, is frequently found in our
States; and upon which THING we sometimes bestow food and raiment, if
it appear hungry and perishing, believing it to be a human being; this
perhaps is owing to our want of vision to discover the process by
which a man is converted into a THING. For this act of ours, which is
not prohibited by our laws, but prompted by every feeling, Christian
and humane, the slaveholding power enters our territory, tramples
under foot the sovereignty of our State, violates the sanctity of
private residence, seizes our citizens, and disregarding the authority
of our laws, transports them into its own jurisdiction, casts them
into prison, confines them in fetters, and loads them with chains, for
pretended offences against their own laws, found by willing grand
juries upon the oath (to use the language of the late Governor of
Ohio) of a perjured villain. Is this fancy, or is it fact, sober
reality, solemn fact? Need I say all this, and much more, as now
matter of history in the case of the Rev. John B. Mahan, of Brown
county, Ohio? Yes, it is so; but this is but the beginning--a case of
equal outrage has lately occurred, if newspapers are to be relied on,
in the seizure of a citizen of Ohio, without even the forms of law,
and who was carried into Virginia and shamefully punished by tar and
feathers, and other disgraceful means, and rode upon a rail, according
to the order of Judge Lynch, and this, only because in Ohio he was an
abolitionist. Would I could stop here--but I cannot. This slave
interest or power seizes upon persons of color in our States, carries
them into States where men are property, and makes merchandize of
them, sometimes under sanction of law, but more properly by its abuse,
and sometimes by mere personal force, thus disturbing our quiet an