ABSTRACT
A corporate body of pirates, though called a State or nation, can have no rights. It is an organized, systematized banditti, and any individual or State is authorized to destroy it. So, a corporate body of slaveholders, though called Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, or Missouri, is a self-incorporated body of marauders. No laws nor constitutions of human device can create for and secure to him any rights; and if they attempt to do so, it is the duty of all to ignore such rights, and trample all such enactments beneath their feet. Rights are the basis of duties: where no rights are recognized, no duties are owed. Slaveholders declare that slaves have no rights. Of course, slaves owe no duties to their enslavers. The right to defend life, liberty and property, even by killing the aggressor, is the basis of every governmental organization in America.
