In those States, the bondman is disfranchised, and for the most part so
are we. He is denied all civil, religious, and social privileges, except
such as he gets by mere sufferance, and so are we. They have no part nor
lot in the government of the country, neither have we. They are ruled
and governed without representation, existing as mere nonentities among
the citizens, and excrescences on the body politic--a mere dreg in
community, and so are we. Where then is our political superiority to the
enslaved? none, neither are we superior in any other relation to
society, except that we are defacto masters of ourselves and joint
rulers of our own domestic household, while the bondman's self is
claimed by another, and his relation to his family denied him. What the
unfortunate classes are in Europe, such are we in the United States,
which is folly to deny, insanity not to understand, blindness not to
see, and surely now full time that our eyes were opened to these
startling truths, which for ages have stared us full in the face.
It is time that we had become politicians, we mean, to understand the
political economy and domestic policy of nations; that we had become as
well as moral theorists, also the practical demonstrators of equal
rights and self-government.
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