These cases are the natural
results of a superior and inferior class of society, standing in the
relation, the one to the other, of proprietor and dependant, and such
evils are not peculiar to this institution. Human nature is the same
everywhere. The South is willing to have the abuses of irresponsible
power among them compared with abuses, discomforts, disadvantages
elsewhere. Grant that an owner may abuse his liberty; ownership leads to
more of care and protection than of abuse and cruelty. The slaves are
here; the question is not, What would be the best possible condition for
these people under the sun, but, What is best for them, being on this
soil. "Set them all free," is the answer of some. Half the ministers at
the North every Sabbath pray for the slaves thus: "Break every yoke; let
the oppressed go free." If this means, Give the slaves their liberty,
this would be their most direful calamity; they would be chased away
from every free state, in process of time, and the Dred Scott decision
would be invoked, even in Massachusetts, by its present most bitter
opposers, and in its most misrepresented forms, as a defence of the
American white race against the blacks.
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