South, where they have to toil without requite to supply the world's
market with _cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, &c_. Our venerable mothers are
borne down with poignant grief at the fate of their children. Our sisters,
if not by the law, are by common consent made the prey of vile men, who
can bid the highest.

In all the bright achievements we have obtained in the great work of
emancipation, if we have not settled the fact that the chattel principle
is wrong, and cannot be maintained upon Christian ground, then we have
wrought and triumphed to little purpose, and we shall have to do our first
work over again.

It is this that has done all the mischief connected with slavery; it is
this that threatens still further mischief. Whatever may be the ill or
favoured condition of the slave in the matter of mere personal treatment,
it is the chattel relation that robs him of his manhood, and transfers his
ownership in himself to another. It is this that transfers the
proprietorship of his wife and children to another. It is this that throws
his family history into utter confusion, and leaves him without a single
record to which he may appeal in vindication of his character, or honour.
And has a man no sense of honour because he was born a slave? Has he no
need of character?

Suppose insult, reproach, or slander, should render it necessary for him
to appeal to the history of his family in vindication of his character,
where will he find that history? He goes to his native state, to his
native county, to his native town; but no where does he find any record of
himself _as a man_. On looking at the family record of his old, kind,
Christian, master, there he finds his name on a catalogue with the horses,
cows, hogs and dogs. However humiliating and degrading it may be to his