People find in texts of Scripture the support of their own religious opinions or prejudices; and, in the same way, they find in texts of the Constitution the support of their political opinions or prejudices. And this may not be in either case because Scripture or Constitution, when truly interpreted, supports such opinions or prejudices, but because people are apt to find in texts simply a reflection of themselves. Most clearly and indubitably, whoever finds support of Slavery in the National Constitution has first found such support in himself: not that he will hesitate, perhaps, to condemn Slavery in words of approved gentleness, but because, from unhappy education, or more unhappy insensibility to the wrong, he has already conceded to it a certain traditional foothold of immunity, which he straightway transfers from himself to the Constitution. In dealing with this subject, it is not the Constitution, so much as human nature itself, which is at fault. Let the people change, and the Constitution will change also; for the Constitution is but the shadow, while the people are the substance. Thank God, under influence of the struggle for national life, and in obedience to its incessant exigencies, the people have changed, and in nothing so much as on Slavery. Old opinions and prejudices have dissolved, and that traditional foothold Slavery once possessed is gradually weakening, until now it scarcely exists. Naturally this change must sooner or later show itself in the interpretation of the Constitution. But it is already visible even there, in the concession of powers over Slavery formerly denied. The time, then, has come when the Constitution, so long interpreted for Slavery, may be interpreted for Freedom. This is one stage of triumph. Universal emancipation, which is at hand, can be won only by complete emancipation of the Constitution itself, which has been so long degraded to wear chains that its real character is scarcely known. Sometimes the concession is made on the ground of _military necessity_. The capacious war powers of the Constitution are invoked, and it is said that in their legitimate exercise Slavery may be destroyed. There is much in this concession,--more even than is imagined by many from whom it proceeds. It is war, say they, which puts these powers in motion; but they forget, that, wherever Slavery exists, there is perpetual war,--that Slavery itself is a _state of war_ between two races, where one is for the moment victor,--pictured accurately by Jefferson as “permitting one half the citizens to trample on the rights of the other, transforming those into despots and these into enemies.”[274] Therefore, wherever Slavery exists, even in seeming peace, the war powers may be invoked to terminate a condition which is internecine, and to overthrow pretensions hostile to every attribute of the Almighty.