The conviction that Slavery is a standing menace to the integrity of the Union and the one great obstacle to peace gathers strength so rapidly from day to day, that many men are adopting the opinion, that it must needs be extirpated, if even at the cost of a revolutionary act.

It would be a misfortune, if this were the alternative.  It is easy to pass the limit of regulated authority, but impossible to estimate the dangers we may encounter when that guardian limit is once transgressed.  We may resolve that we will go thus far and no farther.  So thought the honest and earnest Girondists of revolutionary France; but the current to which they had first opened a passage swept them away.  Though the experiment succeed at last, a long Reign of Terror may overwhelm us ere success is reached.

And thus it is a matter of surpassing interest to determine whether the present stupendous insurrectionary convulsion has brought about a state of things under which, in strict accordance with the Constitution as it is, we may emancipate all negroes throughout the Union who are now held in involuntary servitude.  This question I propose to discuss.

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Every one is familiar with the words in which the Constitution, while not naming Slavery, recognizes, under a certain phase, its existence, and aids it, under certain circumstances, to maintain the rights to involuntary labor which, under State laws, it claims; thus:—­

“No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

The claims to service or labor here referred to may be for years or for life:  both are included in the above provision.  In point of fact, there were existing, at the time that provision was adopted, (as there still exist,) both classes:  the first class, for a term of years, then consisting, in part, of claims against foreign adults who had bound themselves to service for a limited time to repay the expenses of their emigration,—­but chiefly, as now, of claims to the service or labor of what were called apprentices, usually white minors; the second, for life, were claims to the service or labor of men, women, and children of all ages, exclusively of African descent, who were called slaves.

The first class of claims were found chiefly in Northern States; the second chiefly in Southern.  There was a great disparity between the numbers of the two classes.  While the claims to service or labor for years numbered but a few thousands, there were then held to service or labor for life upwards of six hundred thousand persons:  and the number has since increased to about four millions.

The constitutional provision is, that persons from whom under State laws service or labor is due shall not be exonerated from the performance of the same by escaping to another State.  The apprentice, or the slave, shall, in that case, on demand of the proper claimant, be delivered up.