The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 7.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

‘ [102] man with Southern principles' or a Southern man with the principles of a Nero or Caligula shall be President.’ ‘Or look at us,’ say the Whigs, ‘deprived of our inalienable right to office by this Tyler-Calhoun administration. And bethink you, gentlemen, how could your Liberty Party do better than to vote with us for a man who, if he does hold some threescore of slaves, and maintain that “two hundred years of legislation has sanctioned and sanctified negro slavery,” is, at the same time, the champion of Greek liberty, and Polish liberty, and South American liberty, and, in short, of all sorts of liberties, save liberty at home.’

Yes, friends, we have considered all this, and more, namely, that one sixth part of our entire population are slaves, and that you, with your subtreasuries and national banks, propose no relief for them. Nay, farther, it is because both of you, when in power, have used your authority to rivet closer the chains of unhappy millions, that we have been compelled to abandon you, and form a liberty party having for its first object the breaking of these chains.

What is slavery? For upon the answer to this question must the Liberty Party depend for its justification.

The slave laws of the South tell us that it is the conversion of men into articles of property; the transformation of sentient immortal beings into ‘chattels personal.’ The principle of a reciprocity of benefits, which to some extent characterizes all other relations, does not exist in that of master and slave. The master holds the plough which turns