Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/535

 from public view, and that the capital of your republic may continue to be, 03 it now is, under the sanction of congress, the great slave mart of the American continent, consent that the general government, in acknowledged defiance of the constitution and laws, shall appoint throughout the length and breadth of your land, ten thousand censors of the press, each of whom shall have the right to inspect every document you may commit to the post-office, and to suppress every pamphlet and newspaper, whether religious or political, which b his sovereign pleasure he may adjudge to contain an incendiary article? Sure lv we need not remind you, that if you submit to such an encroachment on your liberties, the days of our republic are numbered, and that although abolitionists may be the first, they will not be the last victims offered at the shrine of arbitrary power."

Petitions from the free states praying for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia were daily presented in congress. Southern members objected to receiving the petitions, as praying for an act that was unconstitutional — interference with the right of property without the consent of the owners; and also that such interference would be a violation of good faith with the states of Maryland and Virginia, which ceded the territory of the district to the general government. The discussion resulted in the adoption, by a large majority, February 8, 1836, of the following resolution of Mr. Pinckney, of South Carolina:

"Resolved, That all the memorials which have been offered, or which may hereafter be presented to this house, praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and also the resolutions offered by an honorable memoer from Maine, (Mr. Jarvis,) with the amendment thereto proposed by an honorable member from Virginia, (Mr. Wise,) and every other paper or proposition that may be submitted in relation to that subject, be referred to a select committee, with instructions to report that congress possesses no constitutional authority to interfere in any way with the institution of slavery in any of the states of this confederacy; and that, in the opinion of this house, congress ought not to interfere in any way with slavery in the District of Columbia, because it would be a violation of the public faith, unwise, impolitic, and dangerous to the Union."

On the 18th of May, Mr. Pinckney, from the select committee appointed on his motion, reported three resolutions; the first denying the power of congress over slavery in the states; the second, declaring that congress ought not to interfere with it in the District of Columbia. The third, which was not contemplated by the instructions to the committee, required all petitions and papers relating to the subject, to be at once laid upon the table, without being printed or referred, and without any other action on them. On the 25th of May, the vote was taken on the first resolution, under the pressure of the previous question. Mr. Adams said, if the house would allow him five minutes, he would prove the resolution to be false. Eight members were understood to have voted in the negative: Messrs. Adams, Jackson and Phillips, of Mass., Everett and