[From the Declaration of Sentiments of the Ohio Anti-Slavery
Convention.]
We believe slavery to be a sin――always, every where, and only sin. Sin
in itself, apart from the occasional rigors incidental to its
administration, and from all those perils, liabilities, and positive
inflictions to which its victims are continually exposed, sin in the
nature of the act which creates it, and in the elements which
constitute it. Sin, because it converts persons into things; makes men
property, God’s image, merchandise. Because it forbids men to use
themselves for the advancement of their own well being, and turns them
into mere instruments to be used by others solely for the benefit of
the users. Because it constitutes one man the owner of the body, soul,
and spirit of other men――gives him power and permission to make his
own pecuniary profit the great end of their being, thus striking them
out of existence as beings possessing rights and susceptibilities of
happiness, and forcing them to exist merely as appendages to his own
existence. In other words, because slavery _holds and uses men, as
mere means for the accomplishment of ends, of which ends their own
interests are not a part_,――thus annihilating the sacred and eternal
distinction between a person and a thing, a distinction proclaimed an
axiom by all human consciousness――a distinction created by
God,――crowned with glory and honor in the attributes of intelligence,
morality, accountability and immortal existence, and commended to the
homage of universal mind, by the concurrent testimony of nature,
conscience, providence, and revelation, by the blood of atonement and
the sanctions of eternity, authenticated by the seal of Deity, and in
its own nature, effaceless and immutable. This distinction, slavery
contemns, disannuls, and tramples under foot. This is its fundamental
element,――its vital constituent principle, that which makes it a sin
_in itself_ under whatever modification existing. All the incidental
effects of the system flow spontaneously from this fountain-head. The
constant exposure of slaves to outage, and the actual inflictions
which they experience in innumerable forms, all result legitimately
from this principle, assumed in the theory and embodied in the
practice of slave holding.