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law of slavery, derived as we have seen originally from barbarous Africa; and then, through such Africanization of the constitution, to Africanize the Territories, and to Africanize the national government. . . . Under what ordinance of nature or of nature's God is one human being stamped an owner, and another stamped a thing?
God is no respecter of persons.
Where is the sanction for this respect of certain persons to a degree which becomes outrage to other persons?
God is the Father of the human family; and we are all his children.
Where, then, is the sanction of this pretension by which a brother lays violent hands upon a brother?
To ask these questions is humiliating; but it is clear there can be but one response.
There is no sanction for such pretension, no ordinance for it, or title.
On all grounds of reason, and waiving all questions of “positive” statute, the Vermont judge was nobly right, when, rejecting the claim of a slave-master, he said, “No; not until you show a bill of sale from the Almighty.”
Nothing short of this impossible link in the chain of title would do. I know something of the great judgments by which the jurisprudence of our country has been illustrated; but I doubt if there is any thing in the wisdom of Marshall, the learning of Story, or the completeness of Kent, which will brighten with time like this honest decree.
In closing his grand argument,
Mr. Sumner used these hopeful words:--
Let the answer become a legislative act, by the admission of Kansas as a free State.
Then will the barbarism of slavery be repelled, and the pretension of property in man be rebuked.
Such an act, closing this long struggle by the assurance of peace to the Territory, if not of tranquillity to the whole country,
