Slaveholding States have asserted this power in their judicial decisions.  In numerous cases their highest courts have decided that if the legal owner of slaves takes them into those States where slavery has been abolished either by law or by the constitution, such removal emancipates them, such law or constitution abolishing their slavery.  This principle is asserted in the decision of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, Lunsford vs.  Coquillon, 14 Martin’s La.  Reps. 401.  Also by the Supreme Court of Virginia, Hunter vs.  Fulcher, 1 Leigh’s Reps. 172.  The same doctrine was laid down by Judge Washington, of the U. S. Sup.  Court, Butler vs.  Hopper, Washington’s C. C. Reps. 508; also, by the Court of Appeals in Kentucky, Rankin vs.  Lydia, 2 Marshall’s Reps. 407; see also, Wilson vs.  Isbell, 5 Call’s Reps. 425, Spotts vs.  Gillespie, 6 Randolph’s Reps. 566.  The State vs.  Lasselle, 1 Blackford’s Reps. 60, Marie Louise vs.  Mariot, 8 La.  Reps. 475.  In this case, which was tried in 1836, the slave had been taken by her master to France and brought back; Judge Matthews, of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, decided that “residence for one moment” under the laws of France emancipated her.

6.  EMINENT STATESMEN, THEMSELVES SLAVEHOLDERS, HAVE CONCEDED THIS POWER.  Washington, in a letter to Robert Morris, April 12, 1786, says:  “There is not a man living, who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery; but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by legislative authority.”  In a letter to Lafayette, May 10, 1786, he says:  “It (the abolition of slavery) certainly might, and assuredly ought to be effected, and that too by legislative authority.”  In a letter to John Fenton Mercer, Sept. 9, 1786, he says:  “It is among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.”  In a letter to Sir John Sinclair, he says:  “There are in Pennsylvania, laws for the gradual abolition of slavery, which neither Maryland nor Virginia have at present, but which nothing is more certain than that they must have, and at a period not remote.”  Jefferson, speaking of movements in the Virginia Legislature in 1777, for the passage of a law emancipating the slaves, says:  “The principles of the amendment were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day; but it was found that the public mind would not bear the proposition, yet the day is not far distant when it must bear and adopt it.”—­Jefferson’s Memoirs, v. i. p. 35.  It is well known that Jefferson, Pendleton, Mason, Wythe and Lee, while acting as a committee of the Virginia House of Delegates to revise the State Laws, prepared a plan for the gradual emancipation of the slaves by law.  These men were the great lights of Virginia.  Mason, the author of the Virginia Constitution; Pendleton, the President of the memorable