Not as the property of an “owner,” but as “persons;” and the peculiarity of the expression is a marked recognition of their personality—­a refusal to recognize them as chattels—­“persons held to service.”  Are oxen “held to service?” That can be affirmed only of persons.  Again, slaves give political power as “persons.”  The constitution, in settling the principle of representation, requires their enumeration in the census.  How?  As property?  Then why not include race horses and game cocks?  Slaves, like other inhabitants, are enumerated as “persons.”  So by the constitution, the government was pledged to non-interference with “the migration or importation of such persons” as the States might think proper to admit until 1808, and authorized the laying of a tax on each “person” so admitted.  Further, slaves are recognized as persons by the exaction of their allegiance to the government.  For offences against the government slaves are tried as persons; as persons they are entitled to counsel for their defence, to the rules of evidence, and to “due process of law,” and as persons they are punished.  True, they are loaded with cruel disabilities in courts of law, such as greatly obstruct and often inevitably defeat the ends of justice, yet they are still recognized as persons.  Even in the legislation of Congress, and in the diplomacy of the general government, notwithstanding the frequent and wide departures from the integrity of the constitution on this subject, slaves are not recognized as property without qualification.  Congress has always refused to grant compensation for slaves killed or taken by the enemy, even when these slaves had been impressed into the United States’ service.  In half a score of cases since the last war, Congress has rejected such applications for compensation.  Besides, both in Congressional acts, and in our national diplomacy, slaves and property are not used as convertible terms.  When mentioned in treaties and state papers it is in such a way as to distinguish them from mere property, and generally by a recognition of their personality.  In the invariable recognition of slaves as persons, the United States’ constitution caught the mantle of the glorious Declaration, and most worthily wears it.  It recognizes all human beings as “men,” “persons,” and thus as “equals.”  In the original draft of the Declaration, as it came from the hand of Jefferson, it is alleged that Great Britain had “waged a cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people, carrying them into slavery, * * determined to keep up a market where MEN should be bought and sold,”—­thus disdaining to make the charter of freedom a warrant for the arrest of men, that they might be shorn both of liberty and humanity.