“All men are born free and equal, and have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  If a slave sees fit to walk off, or run off, or ride off on his master’s beast, or sail off in his master’s boat, he has a perfect right to do so.  Slavery is violence; every man may resist violence offered to his person, except under process of law; the person cannot be taken except for crime, or debt, or in war; every man owns his body and soul; the person cannot become merchandise, except for the three causes above named, which he acknowledged were justifiable causes of involuntary servitude at present.  But to forcibly seize a weaker man, or race, and hold them in bondage he declared to be in violation of the laws of nature, and contrary to the Christian religion.

“If it should be replied that Paul the Apostle countenanced slavery by sending back Onesimus, he would answer, that Paul was a Jew, and was not yet freed wholly from Jewish practices and associations of ideas.  Gnosticism has supervened upon the rudimental childhood of spiritual truth.  He believed in progress.  It was contrary to the instinct of human nature to send back a poor fugitive into bondage, and he was glad for one that he lived in an age when the innate moral sentiments, under the lucid teachings of our more transcendental scholars were becoming more and more the all-sufficient guide in the affairs of life.  He would, therefore, publicly disclaim his allegiance to the teachings of the Apostle Paul, if, upon reflection, Paul should insist that he was right in remanding Onesimus to be Philemon’s property ‘forever;’ it was well enough that he should be sent back to restore what he had taken by theft, provided Philemon would immediately release him; otherwise, to steal from Philemon was doing no more than Philemon had done to him, in taking away that liberty which is the birthright of every human being; and Onesimus probably stole merely to assist his escape.  He was justifiable in doing so.

“If one should insist that there can be no intrinsic wrong in holding a fellow-being as property because God allowed Hebrews to sell themselves, and in certain cases to be servants forever, and directed the Israelites to buy servants of the heathen round about them, who should be an inheritance to the children of the Israelites, he would simply say either that the whole pentateuch which contained such a libel on the divine character, is thereby proved to be a forgery, or, that if the pentateuch is to be received, it only proves that in condescension to a race of freebooters who were employed, as the Israelites were, in bloody wars of extermination, slavery was allowed them, to prevent, perhaps, worse evils, and in consistency with their dark-minded, semi-barbarous condition.  In this enlightened age when Greece and Rome had shed superior light on human relationships and obligations, and especially since Christ had promulgated the golden rule, the idea that man could own a fellow-creature