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Nine cases were then stated and enforced, in which the nation had a direct responsibility for Slavery: 1.
In the District of Columbia. 2.
In the
Territories,
Florida being a
Slave Territory at the time.
3. Continuance of the slave-trade between the States.
4. Admission of new States.
5. Rendition of fugitive slaves.
6. Transportation of slaves from one slaveholding port to another, as in the ‘
Creole’ case.
7. Laws of Slave States affecting the liberty of free colored persons, citizens of, and coming from, Northern States.
8. Capture by Federal troops of negroes held by the
Seminole Indians, who were in arms against the
United States. 9.
Power to amend the
Constitution in all points affecting Slavery.
He continued:—
It cannot be doubted, then, that the Constitution may be amended so that it shall cease to render any sanction to Slavery.
The power to amend carries with it the previous right to inquire into and to discuss the matter to be amended; and this right extends to all parts of the country over which the Constitution is spread,—the North as well as the South.
The provisions of the
Constitution relating to Slavery, and open to amendment, were then stated to be those relating to fugitives from service; to the apportionment of Representatives; and to the guarantee against domestic violence which might be invoked for the suppression of a slave insurrection.
He thus closed:—
After this survey, it will be difficult to see how it can be said that the people of the Free States are foreigners, so far as Slavery is concerned; or that they are “laboring to produce an effect, without the shadow of right to interfere.”
On the contrary, the subject is in many respects directly within their jurisdiction.
Upon the North, as well as the South, rests the sin of sustaining it. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in an elaborate judgment,1 has pronounced it contrary to the law of nature.
The denunciations of the first moralist of the age, and the pictures of one of the first poets of the age,2 have marked it with the brand of shame.
More than these: the conscience of every right-minded man proclaims that it is contrary to the Golden Rule of justice.
How, then, can we sustain it?
Lord Morpeth wrote, March 2, 1843:—
I admired extremely your argument in the “Advertiser,” which I thought very close, clear, and unanswerable; and I feel much gratified at having
