MR. PRESIDENT, Slavery, in its foremost pretensions, reappears in
the present debate. Again the barbarous tyranny stalks into this
Chamber, denying to a whole race the Equal Rights promised by a just
citizenship. Some have thought Slavery dead. This is a mistake. If not
in body, at least in spirit, or as a ghost making the country hideous,
the ancient criminal yet lingers among us, insisting upon the continued
degradation of a race.
Property in man has ceased to exist. The human auction-block has
departed. No human being can call himself master, with impious power to
separate husband and wife, to sell child from parent, to shut out the
opportunities of religion, to close the gates of knowledge, and to rob
another of his labor and all its fruits. These guilty prerogatives are
ended. To this extent the slave is free. No longer a chattel, he is a
man,--justly entitled to all that is accorded by law to any other man.
Such is the irresistible logic of his emancipation. Ceasing to be a
slave, he became a man, whose foremost right is Equality of Rights.
And yet Slavery has been strong enough to postpone his entry into the
great possession. Cruelly, he was not permitted to testify in court;
most unjustly, he was not allowed to vote. More than four millions of
people, whose only offence was a skin once the badge of Slavery, were
shut out from the court-room, and also from the ballot-box, in open
defiance of the great Declaration of our fathers, that all men are
equal in rights, and that just government stands only on the consent
of the governed. Such was the impudent behest of Slavery, prolonged
after it was reported dead. At last these crying wrongs are overturned.
The slave testifies; the slave votes. To this extent his equality is
recognized.