one half of its citizens to trample on the rights of the other, transforms them into enemies;” and Richard Henry Lee, in the Va.  House of Burgesses in 1758, declared that to those who held them, “slaves must be natural enemies.”  Is Congress so impotent that it cannot exercise that right pronounced both by municipal and national law, the most sacred and universal—­the right of self-preservation and defence?  Is it shut up to the necessity of keeping seven thousand “enemies” in the heart of the nation’s citadel?  Does the iron fiat of the constitution doom it to such imbecility that it cannot arrest the process that made them “enemies,” and still goads to deadlier hate by fiery trials, and day by day adds others to their number?  Is this providing for the common defence and general welfare?  If to rob men of rights excites their hate, freely to restore them and make amends, will win their love.

By emancipating the slaves in the District, the government of the United States would disband an army of “enemies,” and enlist “for the common defence and general welfare,” a body guard of friends seven thousand strong.  In the last war, a handful of British soldiers sacked Washington city, burned the capitol, the President’s house, and the national offices and archives; and no marvel, for thousands of the inhabitants of the District had been “TRANSFORMED INTO ENEMIES.”  Would they beat back invasion?  If the national government had exercised its constitutional “power to provide for the common defence and to promote the general welfare,” by turning those “enemies” into friends, then, instead of a hostile ambush lurking in every thicket inviting assault, and secret foes in every house paralyzing defence, an army of allies would have rallied in the hour of her calamity, and shouted defiance from their munitions of rocks; whilst the banner of the republic, then trampled in dust, would have floated securely over FREEMEN exulting amidst bulwarks of strength.

To show that Congress can abolish slavery in the District, under the grant of power “to provide for the common defence and to promote the general welfare,” I quote an extract from a speech of Mr. Madison, of Va., in the first Congress under the constitution, May 13, 1789.  Speaking of the abolition of the slave trade, Mr. Madison says:  “I should venture to say it is as much for the interests of Georgia and South Carolina, as of any state in the union.  Every addition they receive to their number of slaves tends to weaken them, and renders them less capable of self-defence.  In case of hostilities with foreign nations, they will be the means of inviting attack instead of repelling invasion.  It is a necessary duty of the general government to protect every part of the empire against danger, as well internal as external. Every thing, therefore, which tends to increase this danger, though it may be a local affair, yet if it involves national expense or safety, it becomes of concern to every part of the union, and is a proper subject for the consideration of those charged with the general administration of the government.” Cong.  Reg. vol. 1, p. 310, 11.