But however this may be, we know the opening of new countries to slavery tends to the perpetuation of the institution, and so does keep men in slavery who would otherwise be free.  This result we do not feel like favoring, and we are under no legal obligation to suppress our feelings in this respect.

Equal justice to the South, it is said, requires us to consent to the extension of slavery to new countries.  That is to say, inasmuch as you do not object to my taking my hog to Nebraska, therefore I must not object to your taking your slave.  Now, I admit that this is perfectly logical if there is no difference between hogs and negroes.  But while you thus require me to deny the humanity of the negro, I wish to ask whether you of the South, yourselves, have ever been willing to do as much?  It is kindly provided that of all those who come into the world only a small percentage are natural tyrants.  That percentage is no larger in the slave States than in the free.  The great majority South, as well as North, have human sympathies, of which they can no more divest themselves than they can of their sensibility to physical pain.  These sympathies in the bosoms of the Southern people manifest, in many ways, their sense of the wrong of slavery, and their consciousness that, after all, there is humanity in the negro.  If they deny this, let me address them a few plain questions.  In 1820 you (the South) joined the North, almost unanimously, in declaring the African slave trade piracy, and in annexing to it the punishment of death.  Why did you do this?  If you did not feel that it was wrong, why did you join in providing that men should be hung for it?  The practice was no more than bringing wild negroes from Africa to such as would buy them.  But you never thought of hanging men for catching and selling wild horses, wild buffaloes, or wild bears.

Again, you have among you a sneaking individual of the class of native tyrants known as the “slavedealer.”  He watches your necessities, and crawls up to buy your slave, at a speculating price.  If you cannot help it, you sell to him; but if you can help it, you drive him from your door.  You despise him utterly.  You do not recognize him as a friend, or even as an honest man.  Your children must not play with his; they may rollick freely with the little negroes, but not with the slave-dealer’s children.  If you are obliged to deal with him, you try to get through the job without so much as touching him.  It is common with you to join hands with the men you meet, but with the slave-dealer you avoid the ceremony—­instinctively shrinking from the snaky contact.  If he grows rich and retires from business, you still remember him, and still keep up the ban of non-intercourse upon him and his family.  Now, why is this?  You do not so treat the man who deals in corn, cotton, or tobacco.