But this Act despoils him of rights, and despoils his State
of all power to protect him. It subjects him to the wretched chance of
false oaths, forged papers, and facile commissioners, and takes from
him every safeguard. Now, if the slaveholder has a right to be secure
at home in the enjoyment of Slavery, so also has the freeman of the
North--and every person there is presumed to be a free man--an equal
right to be secure at home in the enjoyment of freedom. The same
principle of State rights by which Slavery is protected in the slave
States throws an impenetrable shield over Freedom in the free States.
And here, let me say, is the only security for Slavery in the slave
States, as for Freedom in the free States. In the present fatal
overthrow of State rights you teach a lesson which may return to plague
the teacher. Compelling the National Government to stretch its Briarean
arms into the free States for the sake of Slavery, you show openly how
it may stretch these same hundred giant arms into the slave States for
the sake of Freedom.
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