egard such interference as the first step towards a general
emancipation of the slaves of the South." Here is a full concession of
the _power_, February 2, 1836, the Virginia Legislature passed
unanimously the following resolution: "Resolved, by the General Assembly
of Virginia, that the following article be proposed to the several
states of this Union, and to Congress, as an amendment of the
Constitution of the United States: 'The powers of Congress shall not be
so construed as to authorize the passage of any law for the emancipation
of slaves in the District of Columbia, without the consent of the
individual proprietors thereof, unless by the sanction of the
Legislatures of Virginia and Maryland, and under such conditions as they
shall by law prescribe.'"

Fifty years after the formation of the United States constitution the
states are solemnly called upon by the Virginia Legislature, to amend
that instrument by a clause asserting that, in the grant to Congress of
"exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever" over the District, the
"case" of slavery is not included!! What could have dictated such a
resolution but the conviction that the power to abolish slavery is an
irresistible interference from the constitution _as it is_. The fact
that the same legislature passed afterward a resolution, though by no
means unanimously, that Congress does not possess the power, abates not
a tittle of the testimony in the first resolution. March 23d, 1824, "Mr.
Brown presented the resolutions of the General Assembly of Ohio,
recommending to Congress the consideration of a system for the gradual
emancipation of persons of color held in servitude in the United
States." On the same day, "Mr. Noble, of Indiana, communicated a
resolution from the legislature of that state, respecting the gradual
emancipation of slaves within the United States." Journal of the United
States Senate, for 1824-5, p. 231.

The Ohio and Indiana resolutions, by taking for granted the _general_
power of Congress over the subject of slavery, do virtually assert its
_special_ power within its _exclusive_ jurisdiction.

5. The power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District, has been
conceded by bodies of citizens in the slave states. The petition of
eleven hundred citizens of the District of Columbia, in 1827, has been
already mentioned. "March 5, 1830, Mr. Washington presented a memorial
of inhabitants of the county of Frederick, in the state of Maryland,