The Federal Compact Binds The Government "Not To Meddle
With Slavery In The States Where It Exists, To Protect The
Owners in the
case of runaway slaves, and to defend them in the event of invasion or
domestic violence on
Account of it." Thus the rights and property in
slaves of the slaveholders are legally guaranteed to them by the
Constitution of the United States. At the last census the slaves amounted
to more than 3,000,000, or about an eighth of the population, and
constitute an alien body, neither exercising the privileges nor animated
by the sentiments of the rest of the commonwealth. Slavery at this moment,
as it is the curse and the shame, is also the canker of the Union. By it,
by the very constitution of a country which proudly boasts of freedom,
three millions of intelligent and responsible beings are reduced to the
level of mere property - property legally reclaimable, too, in the Free
States by an act called the Fugitive Slave Act. That there are
slaveholders amiable, just, and humane, there is not a doubt; but slavery
in its practice as a system deprives these millions of knowledge, takes
away from them the Bible, keeps a race in heathen ignorance in a Christian
land, denies to the slaves compensation for their labour, the rights of
marriage and of the parental relation, which are respected even among the
most savage nations; it sustains an iniquitous internal slave-trade - it
corrupts the owners, and casts a slur upon the dignity of labour.
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