“take” the slaves in the District, it would be adopting, not abolishing slavery—­becoming a slaveholder itself, instead of requiring others to be such no longer.  The clause in question, prohibits the “taking” of individual property for public uses, to be employed or disposed of as property for governmental purposes.  Congress, by abolishing slavery in the District, would do no such thing.  It would merely change the condition of that which has been recognised as a qualified property by congressional acts, though previously declared “persons” by the constitution.  More than this is done continually by Congress and every other Legislature.  Property the most absolute and unqualified, is annihilated by legislative acts.  The embargo and non-intercourse act, prostrated at a stroke, a forest of shipping, and sunk millions of capital.  To say nothing of the power of Congress to take hundreds of millions from the people by direct taxation, who doubts its power to abolish at once the whole tariff system, change the seat of Government, arrest the progress of national works, prohibit any branch of commerce with the Indian tribes or with foreign nations, change the locality of forts, arsenals, magazines, dock yards, &c., to abolish the Post Office system, the privilege of patents and copyrights, &c.  By such acts Congress might, in the exercise of its acknowledged powers, annihilate property to an incalculable amount, and that without becoming liable to claims for compensation.

Finally, this clause prohibits the taking for public use of “property.”  The constitution of the United States does not recognise slaves as “PROPERTY” any where, and it does not recognise them in any sense in the District of Columbia.  All allusions to them in the constitution recognise them as “persons.”  Every reference to them points solely to the element of personality; and thus, by the strongest implication, declares that the constitution knows them only as “persons,” and will not recognise them in any other light.  If they escape into free States, the constitution authorizes their being taken back.  But how?  Not as the property of an “owner,” but as “persons;” and the peculiarity of the expression is a marked recognition of their personality—­a refusal to recognise them as chattels—­“persons held to service.”  Are oxen “held to service?” That can be affirmed only of persons.  Again, slaves give political power as “persons.”  The constitution, in settling the principle of representation, requires their enumeration in the census.  How?  As property?  Then why not include race horses and game cocks?  Slaves, like other inhabitants, are enumerated as “persons.”  So by the constitution, the government was pledged to non-interference with “the migration or importation of such persons” as the States might think proper to admit until 1808, and authorized the laying of a tax on each “person”