bethink you, gentlemen, how could your Liberty Party do better than to
vote with us for a man who, if he does hold some threescore of slaves,
and maintain that 'two hundred years of legislation has sanctioned and
sanctified negro slavery,' is, at the same time, the champion of Greek
liberty, and Polish liberty, and South American liberty, and, in short,
of all sorts of liberties, save liberty at home."

Yes, friends, we have considered all this, and more, namely, that one
sixth part of our entire population are slaves, and that you, with your
subtreasuries and national banks, propose no relief for them. Nay,
farther, it is because both of you, when in power, have used your
authority to rivet closer the chains of unhappy millions, that we have
been compelled to abandon you, and form a liberty party having for its
first object the breaking of these chains.

What is slavery? For upon the answer to this question must the Liberty
Party depend for its justification.

The slave laws of the South tell us that it is the conversion of men into
articles of property; the transformation of sentient immortal beings into
"chattels personal." The principle of a reciprocity of benefits, which
to some extent characterizes all other relations, does not exist in that
of master and slave. The master holds the plough which turns the soil of
his plantation, the horse which draws it, and the slave who guides it by
one and the same tenure. The profit of the master is the great end of
the slave's existence. For this end he is fed, clothed, and prescribed
for in sickness. He learns nothing, acquires nothing, for himself. He
cannot use his own body for his own benefit. His very personality is
destroyed. He is a mere instrument, a means in the hands of another for
the accomplishment of an end in which his own interests are not regarded,