Criminals may deserve to be bound and scourged, but they do not cease to be persons, nor indeed do even the insane.

Since every man is a person, he cannot be a piece of property, nor has an "owner" any just and moral claim to his services.

Usage, so far from conferring this claim, increases the total amount of injustice; the longer an innocent man is _forcibly_ kept in slavery, the greater the reparation to which he is entitled for the oppressive immorality.

This doctrine I now believe to be irrefutable truth, but I disbelieved it while I thought the Scripture authoritative; because I found a very different doctrine there--a doctrine which is the argumentative stronghold of the American slaveholder.

Paul sent back the fugitive Onesimus to his master Philemon, with kind recommendations and apologies for the slave, and a tender charge to Philemon, that he would receive Onesimus as a brother in the Lord, since he had been converted by Paul in the interval; but this very recommendation, full of affection as it is, virtually recognizes the moral rights of Philemon to the services of his slave; and hinting that if Onesimus stole anything, Philemon should now forgive him, Paul shows perfect insensibility to the fact that the master who detains a slave in captivity against his will, is guilty himself of a continual theft.
What says Mrs.Beecher Stowe's Cassy to this?
"Stealing!--They who steal body and soul need not talk to us.