The Declaration of Sentiments denies the right of man to hold property in a brother man, affirms the identity in principle between the African slave trade and American slavery, the imprescriptibility of the rights of the slaves to liberty, the nullity of all laws which run counter to human rights, and the grand doctrine of civil and political equality in the Republic, regardless of race and complexional differences. It boldly rejects the principle of compensated emancipation, because it involves a surrender of the position that man cannot hold property in man; because slavery is a crime, and the master is not wronged by emancipation but the slaves righted, restored to themselves; because immediate and general emancipation would only destroy nominal, not real, property, the labor of the slaves would still remain to the masters and doubled by the new motives which freedom infuses into the breasts of her children ; and, finally because, if compensation is to be given at all it ought to be given to those who have been plundered of their rights. It spurns in one compact paragraph the pretensions of the colonization humbug as “delusive, cruel, and dangerous.”
But lofty and uncompromising as were the moral principles and positions of the declaration, it nevertheless recognized with perspicuity of vision the Constitutional limitations of the Federal Government in relation to slavery. It frankly conceded that Congress had no right to meddle with the evil in any of the States. But wherever the national jurisdiction reached the general government was bound
