n pass over the stage of life,--courts sit and
pass judgment,--parties arise and struggle fiercely; still all concur
in finding in the instrument just that meaning which the fathers tell
us they intended to express:--must not he be a desperate man, who,
after all this, sets out to prove that the fathers were bunglers and
the sons fools, and that slavery is not referred to at all?

Besides, the advocates of this new theory of the Anti-slavery
character of the Constitution, quote some portions of the Madison
Papers in support of their views,--and this makes it proper that the
community should hear _all_ that these Debates have to say on the
subject. The further we explore them, the clearer becomes the fact,
that the Constitution was meant to be, what it has always been
esteemed, a compromise between slavery and freedom.

If then the Constitution be, what these Debates show that our fathers
intended to make it, and what, too, their descendants, this nation,
say they did make it and agree to uphold,--then we affirm that it is a
"covenant with death and an agreement with hell," and ought to be
immediately annulled. No abolitionist can consistently take office
under it, or swear to support it.

But if, on the contrary, our fathers failed in their purpose, and the
Constitution is all pure and untouched by slavery,--then, Union itself
is impossible, without guilt. For it is undeniable that the fifty
years passed under this (anti-slavery) Constitution, show us the
slaves trebling in numbers;--slaveholders monopolizing the offices and
dictating the policy of the Government;--prostituting the strength and
influence of the Nation to the support of slavery here and
elsewhere;--trampling on the rights of the free States, and making the
courts of the country their tools. To continue this disastrous
alliance longer is madness. The trial of fifty years with the best of
men and the best of Constitutions, on this supposition, only proves
that it is impossible for free and slave States to unite on any terms,
without all becoming partners in the guilt and responsible for the sin
of slavery. We dare not prolong the experiment, and with double
earnestness we repeat our demand upon every honest man to join in the
outcry of the American Anti-Slavery Society,--

NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!

THE CONSTITUTION

A PRO-SLAVERY COMPACT.

* * * * *

_Extracts from Debates in the Congress of Confederation, preserved