The law gives the master absolute power over the slave.

He may work him, flog him, hire him out, sell him, and, in certain contingencies, _kill_ him, with perfect impunity.

The slave is a human being, divested of all rights--reduced to the level of a brute--a mere "chattel" in the eye of the law--placed beyond the circle of human brotherhood--cut off from his kind--his name, which the "recording angel" may have enrolled in heaven, among the blest, is impiously inserted in a _master's ledger_, with horses, sheep, and swine.

In law, the slave has no wife, no children, no country, and no home.

He can own nothing, possess nothing, acquire nothing, but what must belong to another.