The Vice-President of the United States in his speech on the Missouri question, quoted above, after contending that the restriction of slavery in Missouri would be unconstitutional, adds, "But I am at a loss to conceive why gentlemen should arouse all their sympathies upon this occasion, when they permit them to lie dormant upon the same subject, in relation to other sections of country, in which THEIR POWER COULD NOT BE QUESTIONED." Then follows immediately the assertion of congressional power to abolish slavery in the District, as already quoted. In the speech of Mr. Smyth, of Va., also quoted above, he declares the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District to be "UNDOUBTED."
Mr. Sutherland, of Pennsylvania, in a speech in the House of Representatives, on the motion to print Mr. Pinckney's Report, is thus reported in the Washington Globe, of May 9th, '36. "He replied to the remark that the report conceded that Congress had a right to legislate upon the subject in the District of Columbia, and said that SUCH A RIGHT HAD NEVER BEEN, TILL RECENTLY, DENIED."
The American Quarterly Review, published at Philadelphia, with a large circulation and list of contributors in the slave states, holds the following language in the September No. 1833, p. 55: "Under this 'exclusive jurisdiction,' granted by the constitution, Congress has power to abolish slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. It would hardly be necessary to state this as a distinct proposition, had it not been occasionally questioned. The truth of the assertion, however, is too obvious to admit of argument—and we believe HAS NEVER BEEN DISPUTED BY PERSONS WHO ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE CONSTITUTION."
Finally—an explicit, and unexpected admission, that an "over-whelming majority" of the present Congress concede the power to abolish slavery in the District, has just been made by a member of Congress from South Carolina, in a letter published in the Charleston Mercury of Dec. 27, well known as the mouth-piece of Mr. Calhoun. The following is an extract:
"The time has arrived when we must have new guarantees under the constitution, or the union must be dissolved. Our views of the constitution are not those of the majority. An overwhelming majority think that by the constitution, Congress may abolish slavery in the District of Columbia—may abolish the slave trade between the States; that is, it may prohibit their being carried out of the State in which they are—and prohibit it in all the territories, Florida among them. They think, NOT WITHOUT STRONG REASONS, that the power of Congress extends to all of these subjects."
In another letter, the same correspondent says:
"The fact is, it is vain to attempt, AS THE CONSTITUTION IS NOW, to keep the question of slavery out of the halls of Congress,—until, by some decisive action, WE COMPEL SILENCE, or alter the constitution, agitation and insult is our eternal fate in the confederacy."
OBJECTIONS TO THE FOREGOING CONCLUSIONS CONSIDERED.
We now proceed to notice briefly the main arguments that have been employed in Congress and elsewhere against the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District. One of the most plausible, is that "the conditions on which Maryland and Virginia ceded the District to the United States, would be violated, if Congress should abolish slavery there." The reply to this is, that Congress had no power to accept a cession coupled with conditions restricting the power given it by the constitution. Nothing short of a convention of the states, and an alteration of the constitution, abridging its grant of power, could have empowered Congress to accept a territory on any other conditions than that of exercising "exclusive legislation, in all cases whatsoever," over it.
To show the futility of the objection, here follow the acts of cession. The cession of Maryland was made in November, 1788, and is as follows: "An act to cede to Congress a district of ten miles square in this state for the seat of the government of the United States."