Page:The Barbarism of Slavery - Sumner - 1863.pdf/83

 77 lias

been done on

gather

it

the Constitution,

At the The assumption

this head.

together.

may

risk of repetition, I

now

that Slave-masters, under

take their slaves into the Territories, and

continue to hold them as in the States, stands on two pretensions first, that man may hold property in man, and, secondly,

—

is recognized in the Constitution. But we have seen that the pretended property in man stands on no reason, while the two special arguments by which it has been asserted, first an alleged inferiority of race, and secondly the ancient curse of Ham, are grossly insufficient to uphold such a pretension. And we have next seen that this pretension has as

that this property

little

support in the Constitution as in reason

of such an offensive character, that



that Slavery is

can find support only in

it

"positive " sanction, and words of " irresistible clearness this

benign

rule,

questioned in the Senate,

that

advanced civilization words of "irresistible clearness," can be found

principles of an sanction, in



consistent with the " that no such " positive is



the Constitution, while, in

in

harmony with the Declaration of In-

dependence, and the Address of the Continental Congress, the

cotemporaneous declarations in the Convention, and especially the act of the Convention in substituting "service" for "servitude," on the ground that the latter expressed "the condition

of slaves,"

all attest

man was

that. the pretension that

man

can hold

and completely excluded from the Constitution, so that it has no semblance of support in that sacred text nor is this pretension, which is unsupported in the Constitution-, helped by the two arguments, one in the name of State Equality, and the other in the name of Popular Sovereignty, both of which are properly put aside. property in

carefully, scrupulously,



Sir,

the true principle, which, reversing the assumptions of

Slave-masters,

makes Freedom

and Slavery sectional, is harmonized with predominance of Freedom under the Constitution, national

while every just claim of the Slave States the irresistible

has been declared at Chicago. Not questioning the right of each State, whether South-Carolina or Turkey, Virginia or Russia, to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, the Convention there

assembled has explicitly announced Freedom to be "the normal condition of all the Territory of the United States," and has explicitly denied " the authority of Congress, of a Terri-