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305] party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

Resolved, That the principle and construction contended for by the party which now rules in the councils of the nation, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism, since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers; that the several states which formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a positive defiance of those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done or attempted to be done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.

[General Laws of Wisconsin, 1859, 247, 248.]

The growing demand for slave labor in the cotton states led to a marked increase in the number of foreign slaves that were brought into the country contrary to law. Beginning about 1854 there was initiated a considerable movement in favor of legally re-opening the foreign slave trade. Governor Adams of South Carolina recommended it in his message of November, 1856 (Cluskey, 524), and in the several Southern Commercial Conventions held between 1855 and 1859 there was a strong element in its favor, which finally at the Vicksburg Convention in May, 1859, secured the adoption of a resolution by a vote of 40 to 19, declaring "that all laws, state or federal, prohibiting the African slave-trade, ought to be repealed." (De Bow's Review, xxvii, 99.) Leading southerners in Congress favored the movement during the same period.

The following resolves of the New York Legislature were called out in opposition to this movement. The Legislature of New Hampshire, June 23, 1859, also denounced the proposition, and again, July 4, 1860, declared: "That the virtual re-opening of the slave trade in violation of the law, is a species of nullification more dangerous to the Union and more degrading to the country