The works of James Buchanan - v. 3 Author:James Buchanan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: a former occasion, you would establish a magazine of gunpowder here, from which trains might be laid into the surrounding States, which would produce fearful exp... more »losions. In the very heart of the slaveholding States themselves you would erect an impregnable citadel from whence the abolitionists might securely spread throughout these States, by circulating their incendiary pamphlets and pictures, the seeds of disunion, insurrection, and servile war. You would thus take advantage of the generous confidence of Virginia and Maryland in ceding to you this District, without expressly forbidding Congress to abolish slavery here whilst it exists within their limits. No man can for one moment suppose that they would have made this cession upon any other terms, had they imagined that a necessity could ever exist for such a restriction. Whatever may be my opinion of the power of Congress, under the Constitution, to interfere with this question, about which at present I say nothing, I shall as steadily and as sternly oppose its exercise as if I believed no such power to exist. In making the motion now before the Senate, I intended to adopt as strong a measure as I could, consistently with the right of petition and a proper respect for the petitioners. I am the last man in the world who would intentionally treat these respectable constituents of my own with disrespect. I know them well, and prize them highly. On a former occasion I did ample justice to their character. I deny that they are abolitionists. I cannot, however, conceive how any person could have supposed that it was disrespectful to them to refuse to grant their prayer in the first instance, and not disrespectful to refuse to grant it after their memorial had been referred to a committee. In the first case their memorial will be ...« less