e legitimate portion of influence
exercised by the slaveholding States by the measure of their numbers,
here is an intrusive influence in every department, by a
representation nominally of persons, but really of property,
ostensibly of slaves, but effectively of their masters,
overbalancing your superiority of numbers, adding two-fifths of
supplementary power to the two-fifths fairly secured to them by the
compact, CONTROLLING AND OVERRULING THE WHOLE ACTION OF YOUR
GOVERNMENT AT HOME AND ABROAD, and warping it to the sordid private
interest and oppressive policy of 300,000 owners of slaves.

From the time of the adoption of the Constitution of the United
States, the institution of domestic slavery has been becoming more
and more the abhorrence of the civilized world. But in proportion as
it has been growing odious to all the rest of mankind, it has been
sinking deeper and deeper into the affections of the holders of
slaves themselves. The cultivation of cotton and of sugar, unknown
in the Union at the establishment of the Constitution, has added
largely to the pecuniary value of the slave. And the suppression of
the African slave-trade as piracy upon pain of death, by securing
the benefit of a monopoly to the virtuous slaveholders of the
ancient dominion, has turned her heroic tyrannicides into a
community of slave-breeders for sale, and converted the land of
George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Thomas
Jefferson, into a great barracoon--a cattle-show of human beings, an
emporium, of which the staple articles of merchandise are the flesh
and blood, the bones and sinews of immortal man.

Of the increasing abomination of slavery in the unbought hearts of
men at the time when the Constitution of the United States was formed,
what clearer proof could be desired, than that the very same year in
which that charter of the land was issued, the Congress of the
Confederation, with not a tithe of the powers given by the people to
the Congress of the new compact, actually abolished slavery for ever
throughout the whole Northwestern territory, without a remonstrance
or a murmur. But in the articles of confederation, there was no
guaranty for the property of the slaveholder--no double representation
of him in the Federal councils--no power of taxation--no stipulation
for the recovery of fugitive slaves. But when the powers of
_government_ came to be delegated to the Union, the South--that
is, South Carolina and