By emancipating the slaves in the District, the government of the United States would disband an army of “enemies,” and enlist “for the common defence and general welfare,” a body guard of friends seven thousand strong.  In the last year, a handful of British soldiers sacked Washington city, burned the capitol, the President’s house, and the national offices and archives; and no marvel, for thousands of the inhabitants of the District had been “TRANSFORMED INTO ENEMIES.”  Would they beat back invasion?  If the national government had exercised its constitutional “power to provide for the common defence and to promote the general welfare,” by turning those “enemies” into friends, then, instead of a hostile ambush lurking in every thicket inviting assault, and secret foes in every house paralyzing defence, an army of allies would have rallied in the hour of her calamity, and shouted defiance from their munitions of rocks; whilst the banner of the republic, then trampled in dust, would have floated securely over FREEMEN exulting amidst bulwarks of strength.

To show that Congress can abolish slavery in the District, under the grant of power “to provide for the common defence and to promote the general welfare,” I quote an extract from a speech of Mr. Madison, of Va., in the first Congress under the constitution, May 13, 1789.  Speaking of the abolition of the slave trade, Mr. Madison says:  “I should venture to say it is as much for the interests of Georgia and South Carolina, as of any state in the union.  Every addition they receive to their number of slaves tends to weaken them, and renders them less capable of self-defence.  In case of hostilities with foreign nations, they will be the means of inviting attack instead of repelling invasion.  It is a necessary duty of the general government to protect every part of the empire against danger, as well internal as external. Every thing, therefore, which tends to increase this danger, though it may be a local affair, yet if it involves national expense or safety, it becomes of concern to every part of the union, and is a proper subject for the consideration of those charged with the general administration of the government.” See Cong.  Reg. vol. 1, p. 310, 11.

POSTSCRIPT

My apology for adding a postscript, to a discussion already perhaps too protracted, is the fact that the preceding sheets were in the hands of the printer, and all but the concluding pages had gone through the press, before the passage of Mr. Calhoun’s late resolutions in the Senate of the United States.  A proceeding so extraordinary,—­if indeed the time has not passed when any acts of Congress in derogation of freedom and in deference to slavery, can be deemed extraordinary,—­should not be suffered to pass in silence at such a crisis as the present; especially as the passage of one of the resolutions by a vote of 36 to 9, exhibits a shift