It is quite unnecessary to add, that the most distinguished northern statesmen of both political parties, have always affirmed the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District.  President Van Buren in his letter of March 6, 1836, to a committee of Gentlemen in North Carolina, says, “I would not, from the light now before me, feel myself safe in pronouncing that Congress does not possess the power of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia.”  This declaration of the President is consistent with his avowed sentiments touching the Missouri question, on which he coincided with such men as Daniel D. Thompkins, De Witt Clinton, and others, whose names are a host.[A] It is consistent, also with his recommendation in his last message, in which speaking of the District, he strongly urges upon Congress “a thorough and careful revision of its local government,” speaks of the “entire independence” of the people of the District “upon Congress,” recommends that a “uniform system of local government” be adopted, and adds, that “although it was selected as the seat of the General Government, the site of its public edifices, the depository of its archives, and the residences of officers intrusted with large amounts of public property, and the management of public business, yet it never has been subjected to, or received, that special and comprehensive legislation which these circumstances peculiarly demanded.”

[Footnote A:  Mr. Van Buren, when a member of the Senate of New-York, voted for the following preamble and resolutions, which passed unanimously:—­Jan. 28th, 1820.  “Whereas the inhibiting the further extension of slavery in the United States, is a subject of deep concern to the people of this state:  and whereas, we consider slavery as an evil much to be deplored, and that every constitutional barrier should be interposed to prevent its further extension:  and that the constitution of the United States clearly gives Congress the right to require new states, not comprised within the original boundary of the United States, to make the prohibition of slavery a condition of their admission into the Union:  Therefore,

    Resolved, That our Senators be instructed, and our members of
    Congress be requested, to oppose the admission as a state into the
    Union, of any territory not comprised as aforesaid, without making
    the prohibition of slavery therein an indispensible condition of
    admission.”
]

The tenor of Mr. Tallmadge’s speech on the right of petition, and of Mr. Webster’s on the reception of abolition memorials, may be taken as universal exponents of the sentiments of northern statesmen as to the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.

An explicit declaration, that an “overwhelming majority” of the present Congress concede the power to abolish slavery in the District has just been made by Robert Barnwell Rhett, a member of Congress from South Carolina, in a letter published in the Charleston Mercury of Dec. 27, 1837.  The following is an extract: