[Footnote A:  “Large establishments have grown up upon the national domain, provided with prisons for the safe keeping of negroes till a full cargo is procured; and should, at any time, the factory prisons be insufficient, the public ones, erected by Congress, are at the service of the dealers, and the United States Marshal becomes the agent of the slave trade.”—­Judge Jay’s View of the action of the Federal Government in behalf of Slavery, page 93.  “But the climax of infamy is still untold.  This trade in blood,—­this buying, imprisoning, and exporting of boys and girls eight years old,—­this tearing asunder of husbands and wives, parents and children,—­is all legalized, in virtue of authority delegated by Congress!!  The 249th page of the laws of the city of Washington is polluted by the following enactment, bearing date 28th July, 1838:—­’For a license to trade or traffic in slaves for profit, four hundred dollars.’”—­Ibid, page 98.]

The District of Columbia is the chief seat of the American slave trade; commercial enterprize has no other object!  Washington is one of the best supplied and most frequented slave marts in the world.  The adjoining and once fertile and beautiful States of Virginia and Maryland, are now blasted with sterility, and ever-encroaching desolation.  The curse of the first murderer rests upon the planters, and the ground will no longer yield to them her strength.  The impoverished proprietors find now their chief source of revenue in what one of themselves expressly termed, their “crop of human flesh.”  Hence the slave-holding region is now divided into the “slave-breeding,” and “slave-consuming” States.  From its locality, and, from its importance as the centre of public affairs, the District of Columbia has become the focus of this dreadful traffic, which almost vies with the African slave trade itself in extent and cruelty, besides possessing aggravations peculiarly its own.[A] Its victims are marched to the south in chained coffles, overland, in the face of day, and by vessels coastwise.  Those who protest against these abominations are the abolitionists; a body whose opinions are so unpopular that no term of reproach is deemed vile enough for their desert; yet if these should hold their peace, the very stones would surely cry out.  The state of things in this District has one peculiar feature; being under the supreme local government of Congress, it presents almost the only tangible point for the political efforts of those hostile to slavery.  Against slavery in any but their own States, the abolitionists have neither the power nor the wish to exert that constitutional interference which they rightfully employ in the States of which they are citizens; but with respect to the District of Columbia, they are, in common with the whole republic, responsible for the exercise of political influence for the abolition of slavery within its limits.  Hence this is the grand point of attack.  They have experienced a succession of repulses, but their eventual success is certain; the political influence of the slave-holding interest, which is now paramount, and which controls and dictates the entire policy of the general Government will be destroyed.  Then will the abolition of American slavery be speedily consummated.