s by which these servants
were protected, I would just ask whether American slaves have become
slaves in any of the ways in which the Hebrews became servants. Did they
sell themselves into slavery and receive the purchase money into their
own hands? No! No! Did they steal the property of another, and were they
sold to make restitution for their crimes? No! Did their present
masters, as an act of kindness, redeem them from some heathen tyrant to
whom _they had sold themselves_ in the dark hour of adversity? No! Were
they born in slavery? No! No! Not according to _Jewish Law_, for the
servants who were born in servitude among them, were born of parents who
had _sold themselves_: Ex. xxi, 4; Lev. xxv, 39, 40. Were the female
slaves of the South sold by their fathers? How shall I answer this
question? Thousands and tens of thousands never were, _their_ fathers
_never_ have received the poor compensation of silver or gold for the
tears and toils, the suffering, and anguish, and hopeless bondage of
_their_ daughters. They labor day by day, and year by year, side by
side, in the same field, if haply their daughters are permitted to
remain on the same plantation with them, instead of being, as they often
are, separated from their parents and sold into distant states, never
again to meet on earth. But do the _fathers of the South ever sell their
daughters?_ My heart beats, and my hand trembles, as I write the awful
affirmative, Yes! The fathers of this Christian land often sell their
daughters, _not_ as Jewish parents did, to be the wives and
daughters-in-law of the men who buy them, but to be the abject slaves of
petty tyrants and irresponsible masters. Is it not so, my friends? I
leave it to your own candor to corroborate my assertion. Southern slaves
then have _not_ become slaves in any of the six different ways in which
Hebrews became servants, and I hesitate not to say that American masters
_cannot_ according to _Jewish law_ substantiate their claim to the men,
women, or children they now hold in bondage.

But there was one way in which a Jew might illegally be reduced to
servitude; it was this, he might be _stolen_ and afterwards sold as a
slave, as was Joseph. To guard most effectually against this dreadful
crime of manstealing, God enacted this severe law. "He that stealeth a
man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be
put to death." And again, "If a man be found stealing any of his
brethren of