The constitution of the United States authorizes no man to hold another as a slave. The United States has no power to hold a slave. It matters not that it was _intended_ to allow some to hold others as their slaves. A very vile person may _intend_ to lock up in prison an innocent and just one, but through mistake he leaves the door unlocked; does this, in the eyes of any reasonable men, prevent his making his escape through the door? We are certain not. The only proper inquiry here is, which is supreme, the government of the Union, or the government of a particular State of it. It is not necessary to answer this. If the first deal with no one as a slave, the subordinate cannot by law. Persons may be held as slaves by fraud, by cunning, by taking advantage of the ignorance in which we hold them, by force, or a successful combination of force, but not by LAW. [T] “Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel utterance; and then, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul’s complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships:-- “You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged angels that fly around the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free! O that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and you the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on. O that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any God? Why am I a slave? I will run away. * * * Only think of it; one hundred miles straight north, and I am free! Try it? Yes! God helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave. * * *”--_Autobiography of Douglass_, pp. 64, 65.