or the same purpose, as in the
Halls of Congress. Even the preliminary nominating conventions, before
they dare name a candidate for the highest office in the gift of the
people, must ask of the Genius of slavery, to what votary she will
show herself propitious. This very year, we see both the great
political parties doing homage to the slave power, by nominating each
a slaveholder for the chair of State. The candidate of one party
declares, "I should have opposed, and would continue to oppose, any
scheme whatever of emancipation, either gradual or immediate;" and
adds, "It is not true, and I rejoice that it is not true, that either
of the two great parties of this country has any design or aim at
abolition. I should deeply lament it, if it were true."[12]

[Footnote 12: Henry Clay's speech in the United States Senate in 1839,
and confirmed at Raleigh, N.C. 1844.]

The other party nominates a man who says, "I have no hesitation in
declaring that I am in favor of the immediate re-annexation of Texas
to the territory and government of the United States."

Thus both the political parties, and the candidates of both, vie with
each other, in offering allegiance to the slave power, as a condition
precedent to any hope of success in the struggle for the executive
chair; a seat that, for more than three-fourths of the existence of
our constitutional government, has been occupied by a slaveholder.

The same stern despotism overshadows even the sanctuaries of
_justice_. Of the nine Justices of the Supreme Court of the United
States, five are slaveholders, and of course, must be faithless to
their own interest, as well as recreant to the power that gives them
place, or must, so far as _they_ are concerned, give both to law and
constitution such a construction as shall justify the language of John
Quincy Adams, when he says--"The legislative, executive, and judicial
authorities, are all in their hands--for the preservation,
propagation, and perpetuation of the black code of slavery. Every law
of the legislature becomes a link in the chain of the slave; every
executive act a rivet to his hapless fate; every judicial decision a
perversion of the human intellect to the justification of wrong."

Thus by merely adverting but briefly to the theory and the practical
effect of this clause of the Constitution, that I have sworn to
support, it is seen that it throws the political power of the nation
into the hands of the slaveholders;