ity, alike call for your interference upon
this momentous subject.

WM. RAWLE, _President_.[11]

Edwin P. Atlee, _Secretary_,
_Philadelphia, Oct. 1827._

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, IN
CONGRESS ASSEMBLED:

The American Convention for promoting the abolition of slavery and
improving the condition of African race, most respectfully represent:

That an opportunity is now offered, in which, without violating any
supposed private rights, or encroaching upon any state sovereignty,
the exalted principles of liberty, on which our constitution was
founded, may be fully displayed and enforced by your honourable body.

The eminent rank, which these United States have so rapidly attained
among nations, is mainly attributable to the high dignity and
undeviateing rectitude of their public proceedings--to the equal
rights and universal freedom of their citizens. Our enemies can cast
on us but one reproach, but, of that reproach they are not sparing.
Why, they ask, if all men are born free and equal, is the slavery of
so large a portion of your inhabitants still continued among you? To
this enquiry no better answer can be given than, that at the period of
our political emancipation, the situation of the Southern States was
supposed to render the measure of domestic emancipation dangerous, if
not impracticable. Yet those who had the misfortune to be subjected to
this evil, would willingly have commuted a species of precarious and
artificial property for any other more substantial in itself, and more
consonant with their own moral feelings. It has since been the
frequent effort of Southern legislation to diminish the quantity of
the evil, which, it is was supposed, could not wholly be removed.
Hence their concurrence in the suppression of the slave trade, and
hence, in some instances, their refusal to admit other slaves from
other States into their own precincts. In all similar efforts, we
doubt not that the legislature of the United States would accordingly
cooeperate, but the defect of power sometimes impedes the wishes of
benevolence and the dispensation of justice.

Aware that however consonant the opinions of your honourable body on
this subject may be with our own, your constitutional powers as thus
limited, we abstain from preferring any request to which you cannot
accede; but we respectfully submit that in the late acquisition of an
extensive t