I deny it. It neither recognizes slaves as
property, nor does it protect slaves as property."
The Senator here, you see, says that the whole decision is based on
that assumption, which is false. He says that the Constitution does
not recognize slaves as property, nor protect them as property, and his
reasoning, a little further on, is somewhat curious. He says:
"On what do they found the assertion that the Constitution recognizes
slavery as property? On the provision of the Constitution by which
Congress is prohibited from passing a law to prevent the African
slave trade for twenty years; and therefore they say the Constitution
recognizes slaves as property."
I should think that was a pretty fair recognition of it. On this point
the gentleman declares:
"Will not anybody see that this constitutional provision, if it works
one way, must work the other? If, by allowing the slave trade for twenty
years, we recognize slaves as property, when we say that at the end of
twenty years we will cease to allow it, or may cease to do so, is not
that denying them to be property after that period elapses?"
That is the argument. Nothing but my respect for the logical intellect
of the Senator from Maine could make me treat this argument as serious,
and nothing but having heard it myself would make me believe that he
ever uttered it.
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