Slave owners, am I an asshole?

[Bucky]

I implore you. Is it not right, is it not justice, is it not written in the Good Book that a man hath earned the right to eat "by the sweat of his own face"? Mayhaps it is time that we announce that this union shall no long stand half free and half enslaved.

And yes, yes, I used to say there ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States and interfere with the question of slavery. But I changed my mind, mmmkay?

Think about it: The monstrous injustice of slavery deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world. It enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites. It causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty.

As George Mason once said, you can't really hold a man down in the gutter without getting down in there with him in order to keep him down. So it is that this peculiar institution deprives not only the black man of his liberty to do as he will, but the white man of his own liberty to live as he wants, save that he want to make a preoccupation of oppressing his brother and neighbor. Thus, as I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. To be the second is necessarily to be the first, and for thus does the institution of slavery in any one section of the country necessitate the elimination of democracy in the other.

To those who stand to lose certain values of capital by this general emancipation, I remind you that labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Indeed, whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. Why? Because our Republic's defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.