destroy the claim of its subjects even to that which has been recognized as property by its own acts.  If in providing for the common defence, the United States’ government, in the case supposed, would have power to destroy slaves both as property and persons, it surely might stop half-way, destroy them as property while it legalized their existence as persons, and thus provided for the common defence by giving them a personal and powerful interest in the government, and securing their strength for its defence.

Like other Legislatures, Congress has power to abate nuisances—­to remove or tear down unsafe buildings—­to destroy infected cargoes—­to lay injunctions upon manufactories injurious to the public health—­and thus to “provide for the common defence and general welfare” by destroying individual property, when such property puts in jeopardy the public weal.

Granting, for argument’s sake, that slaves are “property” in the District of Columbia—­if Congress has a right to annihilate property in the District when the public safety requires it, it may surely annihilate its existence as property when the public safety requires it, especially if it transform into a protection and defence that which as property perilled the public interests.  In the District of Columbia there are, besides the United States’ Capitol, the President’s house, the national offices, &c. of the Departments of State, Treasury, War, and Navy, the General Post-office, and Patent Office.  It is also the residence of the President, all the highest officers of the government, both houses of Congress, and all the foreign ambassadors.  In this same District there are also seven thousand slaves.  Jefferson, in his Notes on Va. p. 241, says of slavery, that “the State permitting one half of its citizens to trample on the rights of the other, transforms them into enemies;” and Richard Henry Lee, in the Va. house of Burgesses in 1758, declared that to those who held them, “slaves must be natural enemies.”  Is Congress so impotent that it cannot exercise that right pronounced both by municipal and national law, the most sacred and universal—­the right of self-preservation and defence?  Is it shut up to the necessity of keeping seven thousand “enemies” in the heart of the nation’s citadel?  Does the iron fiat of the constitution doom it to such imbecility that it cannot arrest the process that made them “enemies,” and still goads to deadlier hate by fiery trials, and day by day adds others to their number?  Is this providing for the common defence and general welfare?  If to rob men of rights excites their hate, freely to restore them and make amends, will win their love.