God himself could not take away without absolving the being thus deprived
of all moral accountability; and so far as that being is concerned,
making sin and holiness, crime and virtue, words without significance,
and the promises and sanctions of revelation, dreams. Hence, the
crowning horror of slavery, that which lifts it above all other
iniquities, is not that it usurps the prerogatives of Deity, but that it
attempts that which even He who has said, "All souls are mine," cannot
do, without breaking up the foundations of His moral government. Slavery
is, in fact, a struggle with the Almighty for dominion over His rational
creatures. It is leagued with the powers of darkness, in wresting man
from his Maker. It is blasphemy lifting brazen brow and violent hand to
heaven, attempting a reversal of God's laws. Man claiming the right to
uncreate his brother; to undo that last and most glorious work, which God
himself pronounced good, amidst the rejoicing hosts of heaven! Man
arrogating to himself the right to change, for his own selfish purposes,
the beautiful order of created existences; to pluck the crown of an
immortal nature, scarce lower than that of angels, from the brow of his
brother; to erase the God-like image and superscription stamped upon him
by the hand of his Creator, and to write on the despoiled and desecrated
tablet, "A chattel personal!"

This, then, is slavery. Nature, with her thousand voices, cries out
against it. Against it, divine revelation launches its thunders. The
voice of God condemns it in the deep places of the human heart. The woes
and wrongs unutterable which attend this dreadful violation of natural
justice, the stripes, the tortures, the sunderings of kindred, the
desolation of human affections, the unchastity and lust, the toil
uncompensated, the abrogated marriage, the legalized heathenism, the
burial of the mind, are but the mere incidentals of the first grand
outrage, that seizure of the entire man, nerve, sinew, and spirit, which