[15]
The time has passed when this can be opposed on constitutional grounds. It will not be questioned by any competent authority that Congress may, by express legislation, abolish slavery, first, in the District of Columbia; second, in the Territories, if there should be any; third, that it may abolish the slave trade on the high seas between the States; fourth, that it may refuse to admit any new State with a constitution sanctioning slavery. Nor can it be doubted that the people of the free States may, in the manner pointed out by the Constitution, proceed to its amendment. There is in the Constitution no compromise on the subject of slavery of a character not to be reached legally and constitutionally, which is the only way in which I propose to reach it. Wherever power and jurisdiction are secured to Congress, they may unquestionably be exercised in conformity with the Constitution. And even in the matters beyond existing powers and jurisdiction there is a constitutional mode of action. The Constitution contains an article pointing out how, at any time, amendments may be made thereto. This is an important article, giving to the Constitution a progressive character, and allowing it to be moulded to suit new exigencies and new conditions of feeling. The wise framers of this instrument did not treat the country as a Chinese foot, never to grow after its infancy, but anticipated the changes incident to its growth.But it was not until November 4, 1845, that he took his final position on the subject; and this he did in addressing a mass-meeting in Faneuil Hall, against the annexation of Texas. In the opening of that speech, to every sentence of which the future was to impart strange significance, he paid a graceful tribute to the chairman, Hon. John G. Palfrey,—then Secretary of the Commonwealth,—for an act which won for him universal respect, and admiration, viz., the manumission of a body of slaves that had descended to him by inheritance, and whom he had ‘conducted far away from slavery, into these more cheerful precincts of freedom.’ ‘By this act,’ said Mr. Sumner, ‘he has done as a citizen, what Massachusetts is now called upon to do as a State—divest herself of all responsibility for any occasion of slave property.’
