West
India Islands. Of course we desire no national legislation on the
subject. 2. We hold that slavery can only be lawfully abolished by the
legislatures of the several states in which it prevails, and that the
exercise of any other than moral influence to induce such abolition is
unconstitutional."

But what slavery is it that the abolitionists call on Congress to
abolish? Is it that in the slave states? No--it is that in the District
of Columbia and in the territories--none other. And is it not a fair
implication of their petitions, that this is the only slavery, which, in
the judgment of the petitioners, Congress has power to abolish?
Nevertheless, it is in the face of this implication, that you make your
array of charges.

Is it true, however, that the North has nothing more to do with slavery
in the states, than with slavery in a foreign country? Does it not
concern the North, that, whilst it takes many thousands of her voters to
be entitled to a representative in Congress, there are districts at the
South, where, by means of slavery, a few hundred voters enjoy this
benefit. Again, since the North regards herself as responsible in common
with the South, for the continuance of slavery in the District of
Columbia and in the Territories, and for the continuance of the
interstate traffic in human beings; and since she believes slavery in
the slave states to be the occasion of these crimes, and that they will
all of necessity immediately cease when slavery ceases--is it not right,
that she should feel that she has a "just concern with slavery?" Again,
is it nothing to the people of the North, that they may be called on, in
obedience to a requirement of the federal constitution, to shoulder
their muskets to quell "domestic violence?" But, who does not know, that
this requirement owes its existence solely to the apprehension of
servile insurrections?--or, in other words, to the existence of slavery
in the slave states? Again, when our guiltless brothers escape from the
southern prison-house, and come among us, we are under constitutional
obligation to deliver them up to their stony-hearted pursuers. And is
not slavery in the slave states, which is the occasion of our obligation
to commit this outrage on humanity and on the law of God, a matter of
"just concern to us?" To what too, but slavery, in the slave states, is
to be ascribed the long standing insult of our government towards that
of Hayti? To what but that, our