s house,
the national offices, &c. of the Departments of State, Treasury, War,
and Navy, the General Post-office, and Patent Office. It is also the
residence of the President, all the highest officers of the government,
both houses of Congress, and all the foreign ambassadors. In this same
District there are also _seven thousand slaves_. Jefferson, in his Notes
on Va. p. 241, says of slavery, that "the State permitting one half of
its citizens to trample on the rights of the other, _transforms them
into enemies_;" and Richard Henry Lee, in the Va. House of Burgesses in
1758, declared that to those who held them, "_slaves must be natural
enemies._" Is Congress so _impotent_ that it _cannot_ exercise that
right pronounced both by municipal and national law, the most sacred and
universal--the right of self-preservation and defence? Is it shut up to
the _necessity_ of keeping seven thousand "enemies" in the heart of the
nation's citadel? Does the iron fiat of the constitution doom it to such
imbecility that it _cannot_ arrest the process that _made_ them
"enemies," and still goads to deadlier hate by fiery trials, and day by
day adds others to their number? Is _this_ providing for the common
defence and general welfare? If to rob men of rights excites their hate,
freely to restore them and make amends, will win their love.

By emancipating the slaves in the District, the government of the United
States would disband an army of "enemies," and enlist "for the common
defence and general welfare," a body guard of _friends_ seven thousand
strong. In the last war, a handful of British soldiers sacked Washington
city, burned the capitol, the President's house, and the national
offices and archives; and no marvel, for thousands of the inhabitants of
the District had been "TRANSFORMED INTO ENEMIES." Would _they_ beat back
invasion? If the national government had exercised its constitutional
"power to provide for the common defence and to promote the general
welfare," by turning those "enemies" into friends, then, instead of a
hostile ambush lurking in every thicket inviting assault, and secret
foes in every house paralyzing defence, an army of allies would have
rallied in the hour of her calamity, and shouted defiance from their
munitions of rocks; whilst the banner of the republic, then trampled in
dust, would have floated securely over FREEMEN exulting amidst bulwarks
of strength.

To show that Congress can abolish slavery in the