Further:  suppose Maryland and Virginia had expressed their “implied faith” in words, and embodied it in their acts of cession as a proviso, declaring that Congress should not “exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over the District,” but that the “case” of slavery should be an exception:  who does not know that Congress, if it had accepted the cession on those terms, would have violated the Constitution; and who that has studied the free mood of those times in its bearings on slavery—­proofs of which are given in scores on the preceding pages—­[See pp. 25-37.] can be made to believe that the people of the United States would have re-modelled their Constitution for the purpose of providing for slavery an inviolable sanctuary; that when driven in from its outposts, and everywhere retreating discomfited before the march of freedom, it might be received into everlasting habitations on the common homestead and hearth-stone of the republic?  Who can believe that Virginia made such a condition, or cherished such a purpose, when Washington, Jefferson, Wythe, Patrick Henry, St. George Tucker, and all her most illustrious men, were at that moment advocating the abolition of slavery by law; when Washington had said, two years before, that Maryland and Virginia “must have laws for the gradual abolition of slavery, and at a period not remote;” and when Jefferson in his letter to Dr. Price, three years before the cession, had said, speaking of Virginia, “This is the next state to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression—­a conflict in which THE SACRED SIDE IS GAINING DAILY RECRUITS;” when voluntary emancipations on the soil were then progressing at the rate of between one and two thousand annually, (See Judge Tucker’s “Dissertation on Slavery,” p. 73;) when the public sentiment of Virginia had undergone, so mighty a revolution that the idea of the continuance of slavery as a permanent system could not be tolerated, though she then contained about half the slaves in the Union.  Was this the time to stipulate for the perpetuity of slavery under the exclusive legislation of Congress? and that too when at the same session every one of her delegation voted for the abolition of slavery in the North West Territory; a territory which she herself had ceded to the Union, and surrendered along with it her jurisdiction over her citizens, inhabitants of that territory, who held slaves there—­and whose slaves were emancipated by that act of Congress, in which all her delegation with one accord participated?

Now in view of the universal belief then prevalent, that slavery in this country was doomed to short life, and especially that in Maryland and Virginia it would be speedily abolished—­must we adopt the monstrous conclusion that those states designed to bind Congress never to terminate it?—­that it was the intent of the Ancient Dominion thus to bind the United States by an “implied faith,” and that when the national government accepted the cession, she did solemnly thus plight her troth, and that Virginia did then so understand it?  Verily, honorable senators must suppose themselves deputed to do our thinking for us as well as our legislation, or rather, that they are themselves absolved from such drudgery by virtue of their office!