THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY SHOWN FROM ITS BARBARISM.
Letter to a Political Antislavery Convention at Worcester, Massachusetts, September 9, 1860.
Boston, September 9, 1860.
DEAR SIR,—With you I hate, deplore, and denounce the Barbarism of Slavery,—believing that the nonentity and impossibility of Slavery under the Constitution of the United States can be fully seen only when we fully see its Barbarism; so that in the Constitutional argument against Slavery the first link is its essential Barbarism, with the recognition of which no man will be so absurd as to infer or imagine that Slavery can have any basis in words which do not plainly and unequivocally declare it, even if, when thus declared, it were not at once forbidden by the Divine Law, which is above all Human Law. Therefore in much I agree with you, and wish you God-speed.
But I do not agree that the National Government has power under the Constitution to touch Slavery in the States, any more than it has power to touch the twin Barbarism of Polygamy in the States, while fully endowed to arrest and suppress both in all the Territories. Therefore I do not join in your special efforts.
But I rejoice in every honest endeavor to expose the Barbarism which degrades our Republic; and here my gratitude is so strong that criticism is disarmed, even where I find that my judgment hesitates.
Accept my thanks for the invitation with which you have honored me, and my best wishes for all Constitutional efforts against Slavery; and believe me, my dear Sir,
Very faithfully yours,