The insertion of the clause, was the testimony of the eminent jurists that framed the Constitution, to the existence of the power, and their public proclamation, that the abolition of slavery was within the appropriate sphere of legislation.  The right of the owner to that which is rightfully property, is founded on a principle of universal law, and is recognised and protected by all civilized nations; property in slaves is, by general consent, an exception; hence slaveholders insisted upon the insertion of this clause in the United States Constitution that they might secure by an express provision, that from which protection is withheld, by the acknowledged principles of universal law.[A] By demanding this provision, slaveholders consented that their slaves should not be recognised as property by the United States Constitution, and hence they found their claim, on the fact of their being “persons, and held to service.”

[Footnote A:  The fact, that under the articles of Confederation, slaveholders, whose slaves had escaped into free states, had no legal power to force them back,—­that now they have no power to recover, by process of law, their slaves who escape to Canada, the South American States, or to Europe—­the case already cited in which the Supreme Court of Louisiana decided, that residence “for one moment,” under the laws of France emancipated an American slave—­the case of Fulton, vs. Lewis, 3 Har. and John’s Reps., 56, where the slave of a St. Domingo slaveholder, who brought him to Maryland in ’93, was pronounced free by the Maryland Court of Appeals—­these, with other facts and cases “too numerous to mention,” are illustrations of the acknowledged truth here asserted, that by the consent of the civilized world, and on the principles of universal law, slaves are not “property,” but self-proprietors, and that whenever held as property under law, it is only by positive legislative acts, forcibly setting aside the law of nature, the common law, and the principles of universal justice and right between man and man,—­principles paramount to all law, and from which alone law derives its intrinsic authoritative sanction.]

But waiving all concessions, whether of constitutions, laws, judicial decisions, or common consent, I take the position that the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District, follows from the fact, that as the sole legislature there, it has unquestionable power to adopt the Common Law, as the legal system within its exclusive jurisdiction.  This has been done, with certain restrictions, in most of the States, either by legislative acts or by constitutional implication.  THE COMMON LAW KNOWS NO SLAVES.  Its principles annihilate slavery wherever they touch it.  It is a universal, unconditional, abolition act.  Wherever slavery is a legal system, it is so only by statute law, and in violation of