Page:The Barbarism of Slavery.djvu/81

 is often denied, that, in defiance of commanding rules of interpretation, the equivocal words there employed have that "irresistible clearness" which is necessary in taking away Human Rights — yet nothing can be clearer than that the fugitives, whosoever they may be, are regarded under the Constitution as persons, and not as property.

I disdain to dwell on that other argument, brought forward by Senators, who, denying the Equality of Man, speciously assert the Equality of the States; and from this principle, true in many respects, jump to the conclusion, that Slave-masters are entitled, m the name of Equality, to take their slaves into the National Territories, under the solemn safeguards of the Constitution. But this argument comes back to the first pretension, that slaves are recognized as "property" in the Constitution. To that pretension, already amply exposed, we are always brought, nor can any sounding allegations of State Equality avoid it. And yet this very argument betrays the inconsistency of its authors. If persons held to service in the Slave States are "property" under the Constitution, then under the provision — known as the "three fifths" rule — which founds representation in the other House on such persons, there is a property representation from the Slave States, with voice and vote, while there is no such property representation from the Free States. With glaring inequality, the representation of Slave States is founded first on "persons," and secondly on a large part of their pretended property; while the representation of the Free States is founded simply on "persons," leaving all their boundless millions of property unrepresented. Thus, whichever way we approach it, the absurdity of this pretension becomes manifest. Assuming the pretension of property in man under the Constitution, you slap in the face the whole theory of State Equality, for you disclose a gigantic inequality between the Slave States and the Free States; and assuming the Equality of States, in the House of Representatives as elsewhere, you slap in the face the whole pretension of property in man under the Constitution.

I disdain to dwell also on that other argument, which, in the name of Popular Sovereignty, undertakes to secure to the people in the Territories the wicked power — sometimes called, by confusion of terms, right — to enslave their fellow-men; as if this