t may annihilate its
existence _as_ property when the public safety requires it, especially
if it transform into a _protection_ and _defence_ that which as
_property_ perilled the public interests. In the District of Columbia
there are, besides the United States' Capitol, the President's house,
the national offices, and archives of the Departments of State,
Treasury, War, and Navy, the General Post-office, and Patent office. It
is also the residence of the President, of all the highest officers of
the government, of both houses of Congress, and of all the foreign
ambassadors. In this same District there are also seven thousand slaves.
Jefferson, in his Notes on Va. p. 241, says of slavery, that "the State
permitting one half of its citizens to trample on the rights of the
other, transforms them into _enemies_;" and Richard Henry Lee, in the
Va. House of Burgesses in 1758, declared that to those who held them,
"_slaves must be natural enemies_." Is Congress so impotent that it
_cannot_ exercise that right pronounced both by municipal and national
law, the most sacred and universal--the right of self-preservation and
defence? Is it shut up to the _necessity_ of keeping seven thousand
"enemies" in the heart of the nation's citadel? Does the iron fiat of
the constitution doom it to such imbecility that it _cannot_ arrest the
process that _made_ them "enemies," and still goads to deadlier hate by
fiery trials, and day by day adds others to their number? Is _this_
providing for the common defence and general welfare? If to rob men of
rights excites their hate, freely to restore them and make amends, will
win their love.

By emancipating the slaves in the District, the government of the United
States would disband an army of "enemies," and enlist "for the common
defence and general welfare," a body guard of _friends_ seven thousand
strong. In the last war, a handful of British soldiers sacked Washington
city, burned the capitol, the President's house, and the national
offices and archives; and no marvel, for thousands of the inhabitants of
the District had been "TRANSFORMED INTO ENEMIES." Would _they_ beat back
invasion? If the national government had exercised its constitutional
"power to provide for the common defence and to promote the general
welfare," by turning those "enemies" into friends, then, instead of a
hostile ambush lurking in every thicket inviting assault, and secret
foes in every house paralyzing defence, an a