ty of
perpetuating the enslavement of their innocent fellow men:--of chaining
the bodies and crushing the wills, and blotting out the minds of such,
as have neither transgressed, nor even been accused of having
transgressed, a single human law. And the crime, which Virginia and
Maryland, and they, who sympathise with them, would have the nation
perpetrate, is, not simply that of prolonging the captivity of those,
who were slaves before the cession--for but a handful of them are now
remaining in the District. Most of the present number became slaves
under the authority of this guilty nation. Their wrongs originated with
Congress: and Congress is asked, not only to perpetuate their
oppression, but to fasten the yoke of slavery on generations yet unborn.

There are those, who advocate the recession of the District of Columbia.
If the nation were to consent to this, without having previously
exercised her power to "break every yoke" of slavery in the District,
the blood of those so cruelly left there in "the house of bondage,"
would remain indelible and damning upon her skirts:--and this too,
whether Virginia and Maryland did or did not intend to vest Congress
with any power over slavery. It is enough, that the nation has the power
"to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to
be slain," to make her fearfully guilty before God, if she "forbear" to
exercise it.

Suppose, I were to obtain a lease of my neighbor's barn for the single
and express purpose of securing my crops; and that I should find,
chained up in one of its dark corners, an innocent fellow man, whom that
neighbor was subjecting to the process of a lingering death; ought I to
pause and recall President Wayland's, "Limitations of Human
Responsibility," and finally let the poor sufferer remain in his chains;
or ought I not rather, promptly to respond to the laws of my nature and
my nature's God, and let him go free? But, to make this case analogous
to that we have been considering--to that, which imposes its claims on
Congress--we must strike out entirely the condition of the lease, and
with it all possible doubts of my right to release the victim of my
neighbor's murderous hate.

I am entirely willing to yield, for the sake of argument, that Virginia
and Maryland, when ceding the territory which constitutes the District
of Columbia, did not anticipate, and did not choose the abolition of
slavery in it. To make the admission stronger,