The relations of the National Government to Slavery, though plain and obvious, are constantly misunderstood.  A popular belief at this moment makes Slavery a national institution, and of course renders its support a national duty.  The extravagance of this error can hardly be surpassed.  An institution which our fathers most carefully omitted to name in the Constitution, which, according to the debates in the Convention, they refused to cover with any “sanction,” and which, at the original organization of the Government, was merely sectional, existing nowhere on the national territory, is now, above all other things, blazoned as national.  Its supporters pride themselves as national.  The old political parties, while upholding it, claim to be national.  A National Whig is simply a Slavery Whig, and a National Democrat is simply a Slavery Democrat, in contradistinction to all who regard Slavery as a sectional institution, within the exclusive control of the States and with which the nation has nothing to do.

As Slavery assumes to be national, so, by an equally strange perversion, Freedom is degraded to be sectional, and all who uphold it, under the National Constitution, are made to share this same epithet.  Honest efforts to secure its blessings everywhere within the jurisdiction of Congress are scouted as sectional; and this cause, which the founders of our National Government had so much at heart, is called Sectionalism.  These terms, now belonging to the common places of political speech, are adopted and misapplied by most persons without reflection.  But here is the power of Slavery.  According to a curious tradition of the French language, Louis XIV., the Grand Monarch, by an accidental error of speech, among supple courtiers, changed the gender of a noun.  But slavery does more.  It changes word for word.  It teaches men to say national instead of sectional, and sectional instead of national.

Slavery national!  Sir, this is a mistake and absurdity, fit to have a place in some new collection of Vulgar Errors, by some other Sir Thomas Browne, with the ancient, but exploded stories, that the toad has a gem in its head, and that ostriches digest iron.  According to the true spirit of the Constitution, and the sentiments of the Fathers, Slavery, and not Freedom, is sectional, while Freedom, and not Slavery, is national.  On this unanswerable proposition I take my stand, and here commences my argument.

The subject presents itself under two principal heads:  First, the true relations of the National Government to Slavery, wherein it will appear that there is no national fountain from which Slavery can be derived, and no national power, under the Constitution, by which it can be supported.  Enlightened by this general survey, we shall be prepared to consider, secondly, the true nature of the provision for the rendition of fugitives from service, and herein especially the unconstitutional and offensive legislation of Congress in pursuance thereof.