national domain, a transfer of the territory now constituting Tennessee was accepted from North Carolina, (April 2, 1790,) loaded with the express condition "that no regulation made, or to be made, should tend to emancipate slaves;" a formal provision, which, while admitting the power of Congress over slavery in the Territories, waived the prevailing policy of executing it. This was followed, in 1798, by the transfer from Georgia of the region between her present western limit and the Mississippi, under a similar condition. In both these cases, an apology may be found in the very terms of the transfers, and in the fact that the region constituted a part of two States where slavery actually existed; though it will be confessed that even here there was a descent from that summit of freedom on which the nation had so proudly rested:—
——"From morn
To noon he fell; from noon to dewy eve—
A summer's day, and with the setting sun
Dropp'd from the zenith, like a falling star."
But, without tracing this downward course through its successive stages, let me refer to facts, which too palpably reveal the abyss that has been reached. Early in our history, no man was disqualified for public office by reason of his opinions on this subject; and this condition continued for a long period. As late as 1821, John W. Taylor, Representative from New York, who had pressed with so much
