of slavery.

All these things I have charged as aggressions of slavery are national aggressions, for which the slavery party, having control of the administration of this Government, are responsible. I charge them as direct, positive aggressions, on the rights of the free people of the North. In addition to these great national aggressions, there are numerous similar infringements upon the rights of individuals of the North—of tarring and feathering, of whipping—acts of such barbarity and cruelty, that it would chill a man's blood to hear them recited.

Recently, a whole community of moral, peaceable citizens were driven from their homes, compelled to abandon their property, and seek refuge in a free State, from the violence of slaveholders. There are, no doubt, many good and humane men in slave States, who deprecate these wrongs; but they dare not utter a word—every mouth must be stopped, every lip must be sealed, every voice must be hushed, all must be silent as the grave—the most inexorable despotism reigns supreme.

Having endeavored to show what slavery was, and what it has done, I now propose to show what it intends to do. Its advocates claim that the territory now belonging to the Government is the common property of all the States, having been acquired by the common blood and treasure of all; that, therefore, the inhabitants of the slave States have a right to emigrate to the Territories, and take with them their slaves. I am willing to admit that the inhabitants of one section of the country have just the same rights in the Territories that the inhabitants of another section have. I say it would be an act of injustice to deny one man any right in the Territory that another man has, and would be just cause of complaint. But I am not willing to give to a man from a slave State any greater rights than to a man from a free State. And when I have admitted that all have the same constitutional rights in the Territories, I have by no means admitted that men from the South have a right to hold slaves in the Territories. You may go, and take your slaves with you, if you have a mind to run the risk; I say you shall not take your slave laws with you.

I say that slavery is but the creation of some local enactment, and that no property can exist in a human being, unless it is made so by some law. This opinion was entertained by the founders of this Republic, and by nearly every statesman in this country, until very recently. We hear much said about the constitutional rights of the South; it is thundered in our ears from the beginning to the end of the session of Congress. What is meant by this stereotyped expression, I do not exactly comprehend; and, I presume, many who make use of the phrase do not understand it. If you mean by this that the Constitution of the United States gives you the right to go into the Territories belonging to the people of this country, and take with you not only your human chattels, but also your bloody slave laws, I say, you have no such constitutional rights. The Constitution of the United States nowhere recognises slaves as property. The Supreme Court of the United States has decided that slaves are not property under the Constitution. The Constitution gives you the right to reclaim your slaves, if they escape into any other State; this is all the right it gives you, and all there is in the Constitution that can by any possibility be construed to apply to slaves. To contend that there is any power given in the Constitution which enables the slaveholder to take his slaves with him into a Territory, and not only his slaves, but his slave laws, and the slave laws of all the slave States, is an assumption of power that I am not willing to concede to him. It is claimed that if persons from the slave States are not permitted to go into the Territories, and take with them their slaves and slave laws, the rights of the slave States are violated. This cannot be. If you claim to take into the Territories the laws of the slave States, and not only the laws, but the Constitution of a slave State, I claim, also, that I will take the Constitution of my State, which says there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude; and if you do not permit this, the rights of my State are violated, if your doctrine be true.

The emigrants from every State in the Union, under the power claimed by the slavery propagandists, would have a right to take with them all the constitutions and all the laws of all the States. The confusion which would follow would be worse than at the Tower of Babel. If a citizen of any slave State leaves it, and goes into a free State or Territory to reside, he takes with him none of the rights or powers with which his State clothed him while he remained therein. He can take with him such articles as, by the universal consent of mankind, are considered property, and exercise ownership over them. When at home, I am a legal voter; I can vote for any State or county officer, or President of the United States. But if I cross the river, a distance of eighty rods, or go out of my election district, or in any other direction, I have no such privilege. The right of suffrage, which is the highest right that ever can be exercised by a citizen, is controlled by the laws and Constitution of each particular State. In the State of Ohio, a man need not be a property holder to entitle him to the right of suffrage; if he remove into a State where he must have a property qualification before he can vote, are the rights of the State he left violated? I presume no one will contend that they are. A man may have some power in the State of Virginia, given by its Legislature—the right to issue paper money, for instance; but if he remove to Ohio, he has not this right. No man would pretend to claim that any of the rights of Virginia are infringed.

Yet the man who would make this claim, would be just as reasonable as he who should claim that the rights of Virginia are invaded because her slaveholders are not permitted to take slaves into Kansas or Nebraska.

I understand those Southern men, who talk so much about Southern rights, claim not only the right to take slaves into the Territories, but they claim the right to take slave laws and the habits and customs which are practiced in the slave States. They claim to take laws by which four million negroes are reduced to the condition of brutes. Six million white men, women, and children, who have to obtain their living by labor, are condemned to perpetual degradation and ignorance, by which three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders can govern and control the destinies of the millions of people in the slave States; and not only of those people, but of this great country of ours. They not only claim the right to take their negroes into the Territories, but they claim to take laws there that will deny to every man the freedom of speech and the liberty of the press. They claim the right to seal every man's lips, and stop every man's mouth, on questions of great national interest. They claim to take with them the right to condemn as a felon the man who may utter and maintain the Declaration of Independence, or the opinions of the conscript fathers of the Republic. They claim to take with them the right to condemn as a felon the man who dares proclaim the precepts of our holy religion. They claim to take with them the right to strip naked and cut into gashes the back of the man who utters opinions that do not exactly "square and corner" with the interests of the aristocratic slaveholders.

A negro population is one by no means desirable, but a free white man could live where there are negroes, and maintain his freedom; but no white non-slaveholder can live where slave laws, customs, and habits, pertain, and retain the rights that belong to free men in free States.

A man may live in the swamps of the torrid zone, and escape the crocodiles, alligators, and other slimy and creeping things, but he cannot escape the miasma and poison of the atmosphere.

If the