But what slavery is it that the abolitionists call on Congress to abolish?  Is it that in the slave states?  No—­it is that in the District of Columbia and in the territories—­none other.  And is it not a fair implication of their petitions, that this is the only slavery, which, in the judgment of the petitioners, Congress has power to abolish?  Nevertheless, it is in the face of this implication, that you make your array of charges.

Is it true, however, that the North has nothing more to do with slavery in the states, than with slavery in a foreign country?  Does it not concern the North, that, whilst it takes many thousands of her voters to be entitled to a representative in Congress, there are districts at the South, where, by means of slavery, a few hundred voters enjoy this benefit.  Again, since the North regards herself as responsible in common with the South, for the continuance of slavery in the District of Columbia and in the Territories, and for the continuance of the interstate traffic in human beings; and since she believes slavery in the slave states to be the occasion of these crimes, and that they will all of necessity immediately cease when slavery ceases—­is it not right, that she should feel that she has a “just concern with slavery?” Again, is it nothing to the people of the North, that they may be called on, in obedience to a requirement of the federal constitution, to shoulder their muskets to quell “domestic violence?” But, who does not know, that this requirement owes its existence solely to the apprehension of servile insurrections?—­or, in other words, to the existence of slavery in the slave states?  Again, when our guiltless brothers escape from the southern prison-house, and come among us, we are under constitutional obligation to deliver them up to their stony-hearted pursuers.  And is not slavery in the slave states, which is the occasion of our obligation to commit this outrage on humanity and on the law of God, a matter of “just concern to us?” To what too, but slavery, in the slave states, is to be ascribed the long standing insult of our government towards that of Hayti?  To what but that, our national disadvantages and losses from the want of diplomatic relations between the two governments?  To what so much, as to slavery in the slave states, are owing the corruption in our national councils, and the worst of our legislation?  But scarcely any thing should go farther to inspire the North with a sense of her “just concern” in the subject of slavery in the slave states, than the fact, that slavery is the parent of the cruel and murderous prejudice, which crushes and kills her colored people; and, that it is but too probable, that the child will live as long as its parent.  And has the North no “just concern” with the slavery of the slave states, when there is so much reason to fear that our whole blood-guilty nation is threatened with God’s destroying wrath on account of it?