suppress the same acts in the case supposed.  If one case is an insurrection, the other is.  The acts in both are the same; the actors only are different.  In the one case, ignorant and degraded—­goaded by the memory of the past, stung by the present, and driven to desperation by the fearful looking for of wrongs for ever to come.  In the other, enlightened into the nature of rights, the principles of justice, and the dictates of the law of love, unprovoked by wrongs, with cool deliberation, and by system, they perpetrate these acts upon those to whom they owe unnumbered obligations for whole lives of unrequited service.  On which side may palliation be pleaded, and which party may most reasonably claim an abatement of the rigors of law?  If Congress has power to suppress such acts at all, it has power to suppress them in all.

It has been shown already that allegiance is exacted of the slave.  Is the government of the United States unable to grant protection where it exacts allegiance?  It is an axiom of the civilized world, and a maxim even with savages, that allegiance and protection are reciprocal and correlative.  Are principles powerless with us which exact homage of barbarians? Protection is the CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT of every human. being under the exclusive legislation of Congress who has not forfeited it by crime.

In conclusion, I argue the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District, from Art. 1, sec. 8, clause 1, of the constitution; “Congress shall have power to provide for the common defence and the general welfare of the United States.”  Has the government of the United States no power under this grant to legislate within its own exclusive jurisdiction on subjects that vitally affect its interest?  Suppose the slaves in the district should rise upon their masters, and the United States’ government, in quelling the insurrection, should kill any number of them.  Could their masters claim compensation of the government?  Manifestly not; even though no proof existed that the particular slaves killed were insurgents.  This was precisely the point at issue between those masters, whose slaves were killed by the State troops at the time of the Southampton insurrection, and the Virginia Legislature:  no evidence was brought to show that the slaves killed by the troops were insurgents; yet the Virginia Legislature decided that their masters were not entitled to compensation. They proceeded on the sound principle, that the government may in self-protection 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.