These witnesses need no vouchers to entitle them to credit; nor their testimony comments to make it intelligible—­their names are their endorsers, and their strong words their own interpreters.  We waive all comments.  Our readers are of age.  Whosoever hath ears to hear, let him HEAR.  And whosoever will not hear the fathers of the revolution, the founders of the government, its chief magistrates, judges, legislators and sages, who dared and perilled all under the burdens, and in the heat of the day that tried men’s souls—­then “neither will he be persuaded though THEY rose from the dead.”

Some of the points established by this testimony are—­The universal expectation that Congress, state legislatures, seminaries of learning, churches, ministers of religion, and public sentiment widely embodied in abolition societies, would act against slavery, calling forth the moral sense of the nation, and creating a power of opinion that would abolish the system throughout the Union.  In a word, that free speech and a free press would be wielded against it without ceasing and without restriction.  Full well did the South know, not only that the national government would probably legislate against slavery wherever the constitution placed it within its reach, but she knew also that Congress had already marked out the line of national policy to be pursued on the subject—­had committed itself before the world to a course of action against slavery, wherever she could move upon it without encountering a conflicting jurisdiction—­that the nation had established by solemn ordinance a memorable precedent for subsequent action, by abolishing slavery in the northwest territory, and by declaring that it should never thenceforward exist there; and this too, as soon as by cession of Virginia and other states, the territory came under congressional control.  The South knew also that the sixth article in the ordinance prohibiting slavery, was first proposed by the largest slaveholding state in the confederacy—­that in the Congress of ’84, Mr. Jefferson, as chairman of the committee on the N.W. territory, reported a resolution abolishing slavery there—­that the chairman of the committee that reported the ordinance of ’87 was also a slaveholder—­that the ordinance was enacted by Congress during the session of the convention that formed the United States’ Constitution—­that the provisions of the ordinance were, both while in prospect and when under discussion, matters of universal notoriety and approval with all parties, and when finally passed, received the vote of every member of Congress from each of the slaveholding states.  The South also had every reason for believing that the first Congress under the constitution would ratify that ordinance—­as it did unanimously.