Before going into an examination of the laws 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! Did they become insolvent, and by their own imprudence
subject themselves to be sold as slaves? 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_ for six years: Ex. xxi,
4. 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 man who buys 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 he _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 se