Quote

We can constitutionally extirpate slavery at this time. But if we fail to do this, then unless we intend hereafter to violate the Constitution, we shall have a fugitive slave law in operation whenever the war is over.

If not now, then when? If not you, then who? If we are able to answer these fundamental questions, then perhaps we can wipe away the blot of human slavery.

Slavery can only be abolished by raising the character of the people who compose the nation; and that can be done only by showing them a higher one.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

We must continue to judge of slavery by what it is, and not by what you tell us it will, or may be.

The fact that slavery is written into the Constitution is about as entrenched a form of classism as you could possibly imagine.

This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.

But you answer, that the Constitution recognizes property in slaves. It would be sufficient, then, to reply, that this constitutional recognition must be void, because it is repugnant to the law of nature and of nations.