by international law. I
controvert all these propositions, and shall proceed at once to my
argument.

Mr. President, the thirteen colonies, which on the 4th of July, 1776,
asserted their independence, were British colonies, governed by British
laws. Our ancestors in their emigration to this country brought with
them the common law of England as their birthright. They adopted its
principles for their government so far as it was not incompatible with
the peculiarities of their situation in a rude and unsettled country.
Great Britain then having the sovereignty over the colonies, possessed
undoubted power to regulate their institutions, to control their
commerce, and to give laws to their intercourse, both with the mother
and the other nations of the earth. If I can show, as I hope to be able
to establish to the satisfaction of the Senate, that the nation thus
exercising sovereign power over these thirteen colonies did establish
slavery in them, did maintain and protect the institution, did originate
and carry on the slave trade, did support and foster that trade, that
it forbade the colonies permission either to emancipate or export their
slaves, that it prohibited them from inaugurating any legislation in
diminution or discouragement of the institution--nay, sir, more, if, at
the date of our Revolution I can show that African slavery existed in
England as it did on this continent, if I can show that slaves were sold
upon the slave mart, in the Exchange and other public places of resort
in the city of London as they were on this continent, then I shall not
hazard too much in the assertion that slavery was the common law of the
thirteen States of the Confederacy at the time they burst the bonds that
united them to the mother country.

* * * * *

This legislation, Mr. President, as I have said before, emanating from
the mother country, fixed the institution upon the colonies. They could
not resist it. All their right was limited to petition, to remonstrance,
and to attempts at legislation at home to diminish the evil. Every
such attempt was sternly repressed by the British Crown. In 1760, South
Carolina passed an act prohibiting the further importation of African
slaves. The act was rejected by the Crown; the Governor was reprimanded;
and a circular was sent to all the Governors of all the colonies,
warning them against presuming to countenance such legislation. In
1765, a similar bill was twice rea