estroy the claim of its
subjects even to that which has been recognized as property by its own
acts. If in providing for the common defence, the United States'
government, in the case supposed, would have power to destroy slaves
both as _property_ and _persons_, it surely might stop _half-way_,
destroy them _as property_ while it legalized their existence as
_persons_, and thus provided for the common defence by giving them a
personal and powerful interest in the government, and securing their
strength for its defence.

Like other Legislatures, Congress has power to abate nuisances--to
remove or tear down unsafe buildings--to destroy infected cargoes--to
lay injunctions upon manufactories injurious to the public health--and
thus to "provide for the common defence and general welfare" by
destroying individual property, when such property puts in jeopardy the
public weal.

Granting, for argument's sake, that slaves are "property" in the
District of Columbia--if Congress has a right to annihilate property in
the District when the public safety requires it, it may surely
annihilate its existence _as_ property when the public safety requires
it, especially if it transform into a _protection_ and _defence_ that
which as _property_ perilled the public interests. In the District of
Columbia there are, besides the United States' Capitol, the President'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