“Resolved, That our Senators be instructed, and our members of Congress be requested, to oppose the admission as a state into the Union, of any territory not comprised as aforesaid, without making the prohibition of slavery therein an indispensable condition of admission.” ]

The tenor of Senator Tallmadge’s speech on the right of petition, in the last Congress, and of Mr. Webster’s on the reception of abolition memorials, may be taken as universal exponents of the sentiments of northern statesmen as to the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.

After presenting this array of evidence, direct testimony to show that the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District, has always till recently been universally conceded, is perhaps quite superfluous.  We subjoin; however, the following: 

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: