ion are slaves, and that you, with your
subtreasuries and national banks, propose no relief for them. Nay,
farther, it is because both of you, when in power, have used your
authority to rivet closer the chains of unhappy millions, that we have
been compelled to abandon you, and form a liberty party having for its
first object the breaking of these chains.

What is slavery? For upon the answer to this question must the Liberty
Party depend for its justification.

The slave laws of the South tell us that it is the conversion of men into
articles of property; the transformation of sentient immortal beings into
"chattels personal." The principle of a reciprocity of benefits, which
to some extent characterizes all other relations, does not exist in that
of master and slave. The master holds the plough which turns the soil of
his plantation, the horse which draws it, and the slave who guides it by
one and the same tenure. The profit of the master is the great end of
the slave's existence. For this end he is fed, clothed, and prescribed
for in sickness. He learns nothing, acquires nothing, for himself. He
cannot use his own body for his own benefit. His very personality is
destroyed. He is a mere instrument, a means in the hands of another for
the accomplishment of an end in which his own interests are not regarded,
a machine moved not by his own will, but by another's. In him the awful
distinction between a person and a thing is annihilated: he is thrust
down from the place which God and Nature assigned him, from the equal
companionship of rational intelligence's,--a man herded with beasts, an
immortal nature classed with the wares of the merchant!

The relations of parent and child, master and apprentice, government and
subject, are based upon the principle of benevolence, reciprocal
benefits, and the wants of human society; relations which sacredly
respect the rights and legacies which God has given to all His rational
creatures. But slavery exists only by annihilating or monopolizing these
rights and legacies. In every other modification of society, man's
personal ownership remains secure. He may be oppressed, deprived of
privileges, loaded with burdens, hemmed about with legal disabilities,
his liberties restrained. But, through all, the right to his own body
and soul remains inviolate. He retains his inherent, original possession
of himself. Even crime cannot forfeit it, for that law which destroys
his