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1 Henry Wilson, Speech of Hon. Henry Wilson, of Mass., in the Senate, March 27th, 1862, on the Bill to Abolish Slavery in the District of Columbia, Introduced by Him December 16th, 1861 1 (1862)

handle is hein.slavery/sphwma0001 and id is 1 raw text is: S P.E E C H OF- HON. HENRY WILSON, OF MASS0, In the Senate, MIarcli 27th, 1862, ON THE BILL TO ABOLISH SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, INTRODUCED I-Y HIm DE- CEMUBER 16TH, lS(?l, REFERRED TO .THE DISTRICT CO31MI'JTEE, AND REPORTED BACK WITH AMENDMENTS BY MR. I'IORIILL. 0- Mr. WILSON, of M assachusetts; said: Mr. PRESIDENT: The first Congress under the Constitution of the United States was sum- moned to the consideration of questions of tran- scendent importance, which excited the pro; found interest of the nation and of the statesmen of that age. Hildreth, in his History of the United States, tells us that, of all the questions discussed at this session, none produced so much excitement as one startel towards the close of it, respecting the pes n:nsuoet seat of the Federal Government. The Eastern States would have been content to retain the seat of government in the city of New York, where the Continental Congress had established it,; but Pennsylvania sought to win it. back to Philadelphia, and Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas sought to fix it on the banks of the Potomac. The members o4the East, supported by Pennsylva- nia, hoping to conciliate the dissatisfied mem- bers of the South, proposed to fix the permanent seat of government on the Susquehanna, but the proposition was sternly and violently op- posed; and they were told by even the moderate Madison, that if that day's proceedings had been foreseen, Virginia would never have rati- fied the Constitution. The House bill, locating the Capital on the Susquehanna, amended by the Senate so as to fix the seat of government in a district ten miles square adjoining Philadelphia, failed through ,the growing opposition and manifest dissatis- L ,rtion of the men of the South. Thus the Congress of 17819 was stirred to its profoundest depths by the absorbing question, whether the national Capital should be located on the banks of the Delaware, the Susquehanna, or the Po- tomac. These conflicting claims of sections and of interests defeated, in 17-9 all propositions for the location of the seat of the national Capi- tal; but at the next session, in 1790, a bargain, a compromise, was consummated, between the advocates of the assumption of the State debts, under the i .-,d of Hamilton and Morris, and a few members of Virginia, by which the House of Representatives, after taking the yeas and nays thirteen times, determined, by a vote of thirty-two to twenty.-nine, to locate- the perma- nent Capital of the Republic on the bai:s of the Potomac. This victory over the North, won by the skill and determination of the statesmen of the South, placed the permanent Capital of the new Republic on soil polluted by the foot- steps of bondmen. This early vi(tory of the leaders of Southern sentiment and opinion has cast. its malign influences over the policy of the national Government. Here, for two genera- tions, the statesmen of republican and Christian America have been surrounded by an atmos- phere tainted by the breath of the slave, and by the blinding and perverting influences of the social life of slaveholding society. The Constitution gave Congress the power to (.xe-cise exclusive legislation, in all cases whatsoever, over the ceded ten miles square we call the District of Columbia. Instead of providing a code of humane, equal, and uniform laws for the government of the capital of a Christian nation, Congress enacted, in 1801, that the laws of Maryland and Virginia, as they then stood, should be in force on the north and south sides of the Potomac. By this act the inhuman and barbarous, the indecent and vul- gar colonial slave codes of Maryland and Vir- ginia became the laws of republican America for the government of its chosen Capital. By this act of national legislation the people of Christian America began the first year of the nineteenth century by accepting, re-affirming, and re-enacting, for the government of their Capital, the colonial legislation enacted for the government of the wild hordes of Africa, which the colonial nod commercial policy of' England forced upon Maryland and Virginia. The national Government, by re-enacting the slave codes of the ceding States for the government of the ceded territory, accepted as its creed the wicked dogma that color, in the national Capital, is presumptive evidence of sla- very. In 1827 the Committee for the District of Columbia, in the House of Representatives, reported that in this District, as in all slave.- holding States in the Union, the legal presump- tion is , that persons of color going at laxgo

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