It frankly conceded that Congress had no right to meddle with the evil in any of the States.

But wherever the national jurisdiction reached the general government was bound to interfere and suppress the traffic in human flesh.

It was the duty of Congress, inasmuch as it possessed the power, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, the National Territories, along the coast and between the States.

The free States are the _particeps criminis_ of the slave States.

They are living under a pledge of their tremendous physical force to rivet the manacles of chattel slavery upon millions in the South; they are liable at any instant to be called on under the Constitution to suppress a general insurrection of the slaves.