Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/127

Rh other. The South was desirous of removing the seat of government from Philadelphia to Washington, because the latter is in a slave territory, where republican representatives and magistrates can bring their slaves without danger of losing them, or having them contaminated by the principles of universal liberty: The assumption of the State debts, likely to bring considerable money back to the North, was linked with this question, and both were carried. The admission of Maine into the Union as a free State, and of Missouri as a slave State, were two more of these Siamese twins, not allowed to be separated from each other. A numerous smaller progeny may be found in the laying of imposts, and the successive adjustment of protection to navigation, the fisheries, agriculture, and manufactures.

There would perhaps be no harm in this system of compromises, or any objection to its continuing in infinite series, if no injustice were done to a third party, which is never heard or noticed, except for purposes of oppression.

I reverence the wisdom of our early legislators; but they certainly did very wrong to admit slavery as an element into a free constitution; and to sacrifice the known and declared rights of a third and weaker party, in order to cement a union between two stronger ones. Such an arrangement ought not, and could not, come to good. It has given the slave States a controlling power which they will always keep, so long as we remain together.

President John Adams was of opinion, that this ascendency might be attributed to an early mistake, originating in what he called the "Frankford advice." When the first Congress was summoned in Philadelphia, Doctor Rush, and two or three other eminent men of Pennsylvania, met the Massachusetts delegates at Frankford, a few miles from Philadelphia, and conjured them, as they valued the success of the common cause, to let no measure of importance appear to originate with the North, to yield precedence in all things to Virginia, and lead her if possible to commit herself to the Revolution. Above all, they begged that not a word might be said about "independence;" for that a strong prejudice