SLAVERY A SIN.
[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.