in the District, is
endangering the rights and security of the people of the District; and
that any act or measure of Congress designed to abolish slavery in the
District, would be a violation of the faith implied in the cessions by
the states of Virginia and Maryland, a just cause of alarm to the people
of the slaveholding states, and have a direct and inevitable tendency to
disturb and endanger the Union."

The vote upon the resolution stood as follows:

_Yeas_.--Messrs. Allen, Bayard, Benton, Black, Buchanan, Brown, Calhoun,
Clay of Alabama, Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Crittenden, Cuthbert,
Fulton, Grundy, Hubbard, King, Lumpkin, Lyon, Nicholas. Niles, Norvell,
Pierce, Preston, Rives, Roane, Robinson, Sevier, Smith, of Connecticut,
Strange, Tallmadge, Tipton, Walker, White, Williams, Wright, Young--36.

_Nays_.--Messrs. DAVIS, KNIGHT, McKEAN, MORRIS, PRENTISS, RUGGLES,
SMITH, of Indiana, SWIFT, WEBSTER--9.

* * * * *

ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER. NO. 6.

NARRATIVE OF JAMES WILLIAMS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE.

ONE DOLLAR PER 100] [143 NASSAU ST. N.Y.

* * * * *

PREFACE.

"American Slavery," said the celebrated John Wesley, "is the _vilest_
beneath the sun!" Of the truth of this emphatic remark, no other proof
is required, than an examination of the statute books of the American
slave states. Tested by its own laws, in all that facilitates and
protects the hateful process of converting a man into a "_chattel
personal_;" in all that stamps the law-maker, and law-upholder with
meanness and hypocrisy, it certainly has no present rival of its "bad
eminence," and we may search in vain the history of a world's despotism
for a parallel. The civil code of Justinian never acknowledged, with
that of our democratic despotisms, the essential equality of man. The
dreamer in the gardens of Epicurus recognized neither in himself, nor in
the slave who ministered to his luxury, the immortality of the spiritual
nature. Neither Solon nor Lycurgus taught the inalienability of human
rights. The Barons of the Feudal System, whose maxim was emphatically
that of Wordsworth's robber,

"That he should take who had the power,
And he should keep who can."

while trampling on the necks of their vassals, and counting the life of
a man as of less value than that of a wild beast, never appealed to God
for the sincerity of their belief, that all men were created equal. It