introduced the following resolution: "Resolved,
that when the northwest territory was ceded by Virginia to the United
States, domestic slavery existed in that State, including the ceded
territory, and as it still continues in that State, it could not be
abolished within the territory without a violation of that good faith,
which was implied in the cession and in the acceptance of the
territory." What would have been the indignant response of Grayson,
Griffin, Madison, and the Lees, in the Congress of '87, to such a
resolution, and of Carrington, Chairman of the Committee, who reported
the ratification of the ordinance in the Congress of '89, and of Page
and Parker, who with every other member of the Virginia delegation
supported it?

But to enumerate all the absurdities into which those interested for
this resolution have plunged themselves, would be to make a quarto
inventory. We decline the task; and in conclusion merely add, that Mr.
Clay, in presenting it, and each of the thirty-six Senators who voted
for it, entered on the records of the Senate, and proclaimed to the
world, a most unworthy accusation against the millions of American
citizens who have during nearly half a century petitioned the national
legislature to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia,--charging
them either with the ignorance or the impiety of praying the nation to
violate its "Plighted Faith." The resolution virtually indicts at the
bar of public opinion, and brands with odium, all the early Manumission
Societies, the _first_ petitioners for the abolition of slavery in the
District, and for a long time the only ones, petitioning from year to
year through evil report and good report, still petitioning, by
individual societies and in their national conventions.

But as if it were not enough to table the charge against such men as
Benjamin Rush, William Rawle, John Sergeant, Roberts Vaux, Cadwallader
Colden, and Peter A. Jay,--to whom we may add Rufus King, James
Hillhouse, William Pinkney, Thomas Addis Emmett, Daniel D. Tompkins, De
Witt Clinton, James Kent, and Daniel Webster, besides eleven hundred
citizens of the District itself, headed by their Chief Justice and
Judges--even the sovereign States of Pennsylvania, New-York,
Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut, whose legislatures have either
memorialized Congress to abolish slavery in the District, or instructed
their Senators to move such a measure, must be gravely informed by
Mess