From Aaron’s, The Light and Truth of Slavery

We believe slavery to be a sin–always, every where, and only sin. Sin in itself, apart from the occasional rigors incidental to its administration, and from all those perils, liabilities, and positive inflictions to which its victims are continually exposed. Sin is the nature of the act which created it, and in the elements which constitute it. Sin, because it converts persons into things; men into property; God’s image into merchandize. Because it forbids men from using themselves for the advancement of their own well being, and turns them into mere instruments to be used by others solely for the benefit of the users. Because it constitutes one man the owner of the body, soul, and spirit of other men; gives him power and permission to make his own pecuniary profit, thus striking them out of existence as beings, possessing rights and susceptibilities of happiness, and forcing them to exist merely as appendages to his own existence, in other words, because slavery holds and uses men as mere means for which to accomplish ends, of which end, their own interests are not a part. Thus annihilating the sacred and eternal distinction between a person and a thing; a distinction proclaimed an axiom of all human consciousness; a distinction created by God… This distinction slavery contemns, disannuls, and tramples under foot. The constant exposure of the slaves to outrage and the actual inflictions which they experience in innumerable forms, all result legitimately from this principle, assumed in the theory and embodied in the practice of slave-holding.