“The time has arrived when we must have new guarantees under the constitution, or the union must be dissolved. Our views of the constitution are not those of the majority.  An overwhelming majority think that by the constitution, Congress may abolish slavery in the District of Columbia—­may abolish the slave trade between the States; that is, it may prohibit their being carried out of the State in which they are—­and prohibit it in all the territories, Florida among them.  They think, NOT WITHOUT STRONG REASONS, that the power of Congress extends to all of these subjects.”

In another letter, the same correspondent says: 

“The fact is, it is vain to attempt, AS THE CONSTITUTION IS NOW, to keep the question of slavery out of the halls of Congress,—­until, by some decisive action, WE COMPEL SILENCE, or alter the constitution, agitation and insult is our eternal fate in the confederacy.”

OBJECTIONS TO THE FOREGOING CONCLUSIONS CONSIDERED.

We now proceed to notice briefly the main arguments that have been employed in Congress and elsewhere against the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District.  One of the most plausible, is that “the conditions on which Maryland and Virginia ceded the District to the United States, would be violated, if Congress should abolish slavery there.”  The reply to this is, that Congress had no power to accept a cession coupled with conditions restricting the power given it by the constitution.  Nothing short of a convention of the states, and an alteration of the constitution, abridging its grant of power, could have empowered Congress to accept a territory on any other conditions than that of exercising “exclusive legislation, in all cases whatsoever,” over it.

To show the futility of the objection, here follow the acts of cession.  The cession of Maryland was made in November, 1788, and is as follows:  “An act to cede to Congress a district of ten miles square in this state for the seat of the government of the United States.”

“Be it enacted, by the General Assembly of Maryland, that the representatives of this state in the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States, appointed to assemble at New-York, on the first Wednesday of March next, be, and they are hereby authorized and required on the behalf of this state, to cede to the Congress of the United States, any district in this state, not exceeding ten miles square, which the Congress may fix upon, and accept for the seat of government of the United States.”  Laws of Maryland, vol. 2, chap. 46.

The cession from Virginia was made by act of the Legislature of that State on the 3d of December, 1788, in the following words: