of the South, yourselves, have ever been willing to do as much? It is
kindly provided that of all those who come into the world only a small
percentage are natural tyrants. That percentage is no larger in the slave
States than in the free. The great majority South, as well as North, have
human sympathies, of which they can no more divest themselves than they
can of their sensibility to physical pain. These sympathies in the bosoms
of the Southern people manifest, in many ways, their sense of the wrong
of slavery, and their consciousness that, after all, there is humanity in
the negro. If they deny this, let me address them a few plain questions.
In 1820 you (the South) joined the North, almost unanimously, in
declaring the African slave trade piracy, and in annexing to it the
punishment of death. Why did you do this? If you did not feel that it was
wrong, why did you join in providing that men should be hung for it? The
practice was no more than bringing wild negroes from Africa to such as
would buy them. But you never thought of hanging men for catching and
selling wild horses, wild buffaloes, or wild bears.

Again, you have among you a sneaking individual of the class of native
tyrants known as the "slavedealer." He watches your necessities, and
crawls up to buy your slave, at a speculating price. If you cannot help
it, you sell to him; but if you can help it, you drive him from your
door. You despise him utterly. You do not recognize him as a friend, or
even as an honest man. Your children must not play with his; they may
rollick freely with the little negroes, but not with the slave-dealer's
children. If you are obliged to deal with him, you try to get through the
job without so much as touching him. It is common with you to join hands
with the men you meet, but with the slave-dealer you avoid the
ceremony--instinctively shrinking from the snaky contact. If he grows
rich and retires from business, you still remember him, and still keep up
the ban of non-intercourse upon him and his family. Now, why is this? You