If the states had to vote on slavery, we would have lost the vote.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?
There is not only no free state which would now establish it, but there is no slave state, which, if it had had the free alternative as we now have, would have founded slavery.
Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty.
Slavery existed before the formation of this Union. It derived from the Constitution that recognition which it would not have enjoyed without the confederation. If the States had not united together, there would have been no obligation on adjoining States to regard any species of property unknown to themselves.
Congress would exclude slavery from any territory that in the future might be acquired from Mexico.
If there is a State, then there is domination, and in turn, there is slavery.
Slavery was the betrayal of the American Promise at the moment that promise was made.
To reduce this claim of slavery to an absurdity, it is only necessary to add that there are only two states in which slaves are a majority, and not one in which the slaveholders are not a very disproportionate minority.
Countless black citizens in the South couldn't vote. They were second-class citizens from cradle to grave. The discrimination was terrible, brutal.
We can constitutionally extirpate slavery at this time.