"Marriage is a civil ordinance they cannot enjoy. Our laws do not recognize this relation as existing among them, and of course, do not enforce by any sanction, the observance of its duties. Indeed, until slavery waxeth old and tendeth to decay, there cannot be any legal recognition of the marriage rite, or the enforcement of its consequent duties. For all the regulations on this subject _would limit the master's absolute right of property_ in the slaves. In his disposal of them he could no longer be at liberty to consult merely his own interests. He could no longer separate the wife and the husband to suit the convenience or interest of the purchaser." (_Address of the Synod of Ky._) The laws intend to make slaves absolute property, and hence no relation is legalized which would detract from the value of that property. The interest of the _owner_ alone is consulted. These laws, horrible as they appear, are entirely consistent with _chattel slavery_. And the general _practice_ upon these laws comes up fully to their spirit. Whenever the convenience, interest or passion of a master requires it, slaves are sold and scattered abroad without the slightest regard to those dear and sacred connections, which they regard, and which God, no doubt, regards as marriage. In newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves it is frequently stated that the fugitive property was bought at a certain place "where he has a wife," and the probability is that he is "lurking about that place." An advertisement in a New Orleans paper, after describing the slave Charles, as "six feet high," "copper color," rather "pleasing appearance," adds, in order that the pursuers may have some clue to his whereabouts, "it is more than probable that he will make his way to Tennessee, as he has a wife now living there." Another advertises the runaway "Ned," of "copper color, full forehead." "Ned," continues the notice, "was purchased in Richmond of Mr. Goodin, and has a wife in that vicinity." Another describes a runaway woman, and suggests that she may be lurking about "in the country where her husband is owned." These are very natural suggestions. A husband, though a slave, and bound to his wife by no legal tie, is not unfrequently to the slave wife all that _husband_ means, and if that wife escape from her unfeeling oppressors, who have carried her away to a distant State, it is quite natural that she should bend her steps toward the partner of her bosom, and subject herself to incredible hardships and dangers that she might see his face once more, and unburden to him her sorrow-ladened heart.