“The southern states would not have ratified the constitution, if they had supposed that it gave this power.”  It is a sufficient answer to this objection, that the northern states would not have ratified it, if they had supposed that it withheld the power.  If “suppositions” are to take the place of the constitution—­coming from both sides, they neutralize each other.  To argue a constitutional question by guessing at the “suppositions” that might have been made by the parties to it would find small favor in a court of law.  But even a desperate shift is some easement when sorely pushed.  If this question is to be settled by “suppositions,” suppositions shall be forthcoming, and that without stint.

First, then, I affirm that the North ratified the constitution, “supposing” that slavery had begun to wax old, and would speedily vanish away, and especially that the abolition of the slave trade, which by the constitution was to be surrendered to Congress after twenty years, would plunge it headlong.

Would the North have adopted the constitution, giving three-fifths of the “slave property” a representation, if it had “supposed” that the slaves would have increased from half a million to two millions and a half by 1838—­and that the census of 1840 would give to the slave states thirty representatives of “slave property?”

If they had “supposed” that this representation would have controlled the legislation of the government, and carried against the North every question vital to its interests, would Hamilton, Franklin, Sherman, Gerry, Livingston, Langdon, and Rufus King have been such madmen, as to sign the constitution, and the Northern States such suicides as to ratify it?  Every self-preserving instinct would have shrieked at such an infatuate immolation.  At the adoption of the United States constitution, slavery was regarded as a fast waning system.  This conviction was universal.  Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Grayson, Tucker, Madison, Wythe, Pendleton, Lee, Blair, Mason, Page, Parker, Randolph, Iredell, Spaight, Ramsey, Pinkney, Martin, McHenry, Chase, and nearly all the illustrious names south of the Potomac, proclaimed it before the sun.  A reason urged in the convention that formed the United States’ constitution, why the word slave should not be used in it, was, that when slavery should cease there might remain upon the National Charter no record that it had ever been. (See speech of Mr. Burrill, of R.I., on the Missouri question.)

I now proceed to show by testimony, that at the date of the United States’ constitution, and for several years before and after that period, slavery was rapidly on the wane; that the American Revolution with the great events preceding, accompanying, and following it, had wrought an immense and almost universal change in the public sentiment of the nation on the subject, powerfully impelling it toward the entire abolition of the system—­and that it was the general belief that measures for its abolition throughout the Union, would be commenced by the States generally before the lapse of many years.  A great mass of testimony establishing this position might be presented, but narrow space, and the importance of speedy publication, counsel brevity.  Let the following proofs suffice.  First, a few dates as points of observation.