It is only when we contemplate the slave as a moral and intellectual being, that we can adequately comprehend the unparalleled enormity of slavery, and the intense criminality of the slaveholder.

I have said that the slave was a man.

"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action{339} how like an angel! In apprehension how like a God! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!" The slave is a man, "the image of God," but "a little lower than the angels;" possessing a soul, eternal and indestructible; capable of endless happiness, or immeasurable woe; a creature of hopes and fears, of affections and passions, of joys and sorrows, and he is endowed with those mysterious powers by which man soars above the things of time and sense, and grasps, with undying tenacity, the elevating and sublimely glorious idea of a God.

It is _such_ a being that is smitten and blasted.

The first work of slavery is to mar and deface those characteristics of its victims which distinguish _men_ from _things_, and _persons_ from _property_.