rected; to fix and establish those principles as the
basis of all laws, constitutions, and governments, which forever
hereafter shall be formed in the said territory, &c.; it is hereby
ordained and declared that the following articles, &c." One of these
articles is that, which has been referred to, and which declares that
"there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said
Territory."

You will perhaps make light of my reference to James Wilson and Benjamin
Franklin, for I recollect you say, that, "When the Constitution was
about going into operation, its powers were not well understood by the
community at large, and remained to be accurately interpreted and
defined." Nevertheless, I think it wise to repose more confidence in the
views, which the framers of the Constitution took of the spirit and
principles of that instrument, than in the definitions and
interpretations of the pro-slavery generation, which has succeeded them.

It should be regarded as no inconsiderable evidence of the anti-slavery
genius and policy of the Constitution, that Congress promptly
interdicted slavery in the first portion of territory, and that, too, a
territory of vast extent, over which it acquired jurisdiction. And is it
not a perfectly reasonable supposition, that the seat of our Government
would not have been polluted by the presence of slavery, had Congress
acted on that subject by itself, instead of losing sight of it in the
wholesale legislation, by which the laws of Virginia and Maryland were
revived in the District?

If the Federal Constitution be not anti-slavery in its general scope and
character; if it be not impregnated with the principles of universal
liberty; why was it necessary, in order to restrain Congress, for a
limited period, from acting against the slave trade, which is but a
branch or incident of slavery, to have a clause to that end in the
Constitution? The fact that the framers of the Constitution refused to
blot its pages with the word "slave" or "slavery;" and that, by
periphrase and the substitution of "persons" for "slaves," they sought
to conceal from posterity and the world the mortifying fact, that
slavery existed under a government based on the principle, that
governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
contains volumes of proof, that they looked upon American slavery as a
decaying institution; and that they would naturally shape the
Constitution to the abridg