Virginia slaveholders not 'slave-breeders?'

We often see, in the speeches and writings of the South, that slaveholders claim as absolute and as rightful a property in their slaves, as in their cattle.

they can never believe that slaveholders inflict cruelties upon their slaves!

Still less did the proud and conservative citizens of New England recognize in the cruelties of Southern slaveholders a crime which would provoke one of the bloodiest wars of modern times, and lead to the constitutional and political equality of the whites and blacks.

The Republican party, it is true, gained adherents, and acquired strength by degrees; and Mr. Buchanan's term of office approaching its expiration, it became apparent that the Democratic party was about to lose its supremacy, and the slaveholders their dominion; and no sooner was this evident than the latter threw off the mask, and renounced their allegiance to the Union.

I need all my strength, all my reason, at times to say to myself, as I say to others'Are not these slaveholders men of like passions with yourself?