Of one thing I am certain, that as
the passage of slaves from one State to another, would not make a
slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their
diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier,
and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation,
by dividing the burthen on a greater number of coadjutors. An
abstinence, too, from this act of power, would remove the jealousy
excited by the undertaking of Congress to regulate the condition of the
different descriptions of men composing a State. This certainly is the
exclusive right of every State, which nothing in the constitution has
taken from them, and given to the General Government. Could Congress,
for example, say, that the non-freemen of Connecticut shall be freemen,
or that they shall not emigrate into any other State?
I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice
of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government
and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and
unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be,
that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh
the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more
likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before
they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason
against the hopes of the world.
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