“To those who know thee not no words can paint, And those who know thee know all words are faint.” Believe me, fellow-citizens, I do not present this outline willingly. Gladly would I drop a veil over the revolting features. But when audacious claims are made for Slavery, and you are told by one candidate that it travels with the Constitution into new Territories, and then by another candidate that the handful of first settlers can alone deal with it in the Territories, while Congress sits powerless, it becomes your duty to consider precisely what Slavery is, to study it in the law from which it derives its character, and to follow it also in all its effects. Here is the essential and vital part of the argument, even on the question of Constitutional Law. It is only when this is done that we can see how irrational is every effort to give it constitutional force, or to save it from the action of Congress within the national jurisdiction. According to the claim now made, Slavery exists under the Constitution everywhere outside the States,--in other words, Slavery is National; whereas just the contrary is true. Everywhere outside the States Freedom must prevail; in other words, Freedom is National. Yes, Freedom is National, and Slavery Sectional. Read the Constitution, and tell me if it be not so. Surely, if a pretension so peculiar as that now set up could be found there, it would be plain to all, so that no man could question it. Like the Decalogue, it would be in positive language: “Thou shalt enslave thy brother man.” It would be left to no doubtful phrase or ambiguous words, but would stand forth in appalling certainty, a “darkness visible.” It would be stuck up, like Gessler’s hat in the marketplace, so that all could see it. But nothing is clearer than that in this well-considered instrument there is not one clause or word which maintains property in man, not one clause or word on which any such pretension can be founded. Wherever there is any imagined reference to slaves, it is at most only to their possible existence in States, “under the laws thereof”; and then their designation as “persons” shows, that, whatever may be their condition in the States, the Constitution does not regard them as “property.” Thank God, the Constitution does not contain the idea that man can be the property of man. It was the declared purpose of Mr. Madison to exclude this idea. So completely has this been done, that it is among boasts often made, that a stranger in a distant country or a future age, reading our Constitution, and having no other record of our history, would not know that any human being had ever been claimed as “property” within the limits of the Republic. The text, at least, of the Constitution is blameless. If men find Slavery there, it is only because they make the Constitution reflect their own souls.