ral government,
notwithstanding the frequent and wide departures from the integrity of
the constitution on this subject, slaves are not recognized as
_property_ without qualification. Congress has always refused to grant
compensation for slaves killed or taken by the enemy, even when these
slaves had been impressed into the United States' service. In half a
score of cases since the last war, Congress has rejected such
applications for compensation. Besides, both in Congressional acts, and
in our national diplomacy, slaves and property are not used as
convertible terms. When mentioned in treaties and state papers it is in
such a way as to distinguish them from mere property, and generally by a
recognition of their _personality_. In the invariable recognition of
slaves as _persons_, the United States' constitution caught the mantle
of the glorious Declaration, and most worthily wears it. It recognizes
all human beings as "men," "persons," and thus as "equals." In the
original draft of the Declaration, as it came from the hand of
Jefferson, it is alleged that Great Britain had "waged a cruel war
against _human_ nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life
and liberty in the persons of a distant people, carrying them into
slavery, * * determined to keep up a market where MEN should be bought
and sold,"--thus disdaining to make the charter of freedom a warrant for
the arrest of _men_, that they might be shorn both of liberty
and humanity.

The celebrated Roger Sherman, one of the committee of five appointed to
draft the Declaration of Independence, and a member of the convention
that formed the United States' constitution, said, in the first Congress
after its adoption: "The constitution _does not consider these persons,
(slaves,) as a species of property_."--[Lloyd's Cong. Reg. v. 1, p.
313.] That the United States' Constitution does not make slaves
"property," is shown in the fact, that no person, either as a citizen of
the United States, or by having his domicile within the United States'
government, can hold slaves. He can hold them only by deriving his power
from _state_ laws, or from the laws of Congress, if he hold slaves
within the District. But no person resident within the United States'
jurisdiction, and _not_ within the District, nor within a state whose
laws support slavery, nor "held to service" under the laws of such a
state or district, having escaped therefrom, _can be held as a slave_.

Men can