cotton and of sugar, unknown in the
Union at the establishment of the Constitution, has added largely to
the pecuniary value of the slave. Aud the suppression of the African
slave-trade as piracy upon pain of death, by securing the benefit of a
monopoly to the virtuous slaveholders of the ancient dominion, has
turned her heroic tyrannicides into a community of slave-breeders for
sale, and converted the land of GEORGE WASHINGTON, PATRICK HENRY,
RICHARD HENRY LEE, and THOMAS JEFFERSON, into a great barracoon--a
cattle-show of human beings, an emporium, of which the staple articles
of merchandise are the flesh and blood, the bones and sinews of
immortal man.

Of the increasing abomination of slavery in the unbought hearts of men
at the time when the Constitution of the United States was formed,
what clearer proof could be desired, than that the very same year in
which that charter of the land was issued, the Congress of the
Confederation, with not a tithe of the powers given by the people to
the Congress of the new compact, actually abolished slavery for ever
throughout the whole Northwestern territory, without a remonstrance or
a murmur. But in the articles of confederation, there was no guaranty
for the property of the slaveholder--no double representation of him
in the Federal councils--no power of taxation--no stipulation for the
recovery of fugitive slaves. But when the powers of _government_ came
to be delegated to the Union, the South--that is, South Carolina and
Georgia--refused their subscription to the parchment, till it should
be saturated with the infection of slavery, which no fumigation could
purify, no quarantine could extinguish. The freemen of the North gave
way, and the deadly venom of slavery was infused into the Constitution
of freedom. Its first consequence has been to invert the first
principle of Democracy, that the will of the majority of numbers shall
rule the land. By means of the double representation, the minority
command the whole, and a KNOT OF SLAVEHOLDERS GIVE THE LAW AND
PRESCRIBE THE POLICY OF THE COUNTRY. To acquire this superiority of a
large majority of freemen, a persevering system of engrossing nearly
all the seats of power and place, is constantly for a long series of
years pursued, and you have seen, in a period of fifty-six years, the
Chief-magistracy of the Union held, during forty-four of them, by the
owners of slaves. The Executive department, the Army and Navy, the
Supreme Jud