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Report of the Joint Select Committee on Federal and State Relation. 1850 521 (1850.1)

handle is hein.slavery/ssactsms0268 and id is 1 raw text is: LAWS OF MISSISSIP.

CHAPTER 352.
REPORT of the Joint Select Committee on Federal and State
Relaions.
MR. PRESIDENT:-The joint standing committee
on Federal and State relations, to whom was refer-
ren so much of the Governor's message as relates to
the subject of slavery and the unhappy agitation of
it, which at present distracts the councils of the na-
tion, and threatens the dissolution of our Union as a
confederacy of States, have had the subject under
consideration, and have instructed me to make the
following report:
We have arrived at a period in the political exist-
ence of our country, when the fears of the patriot
and philanthropist may well be excited, lest the no-
blest fabric of c9institutional government on earth
may, ere long, be laid in ruins by the elements of dis-
cord, engendered by an unholy lust for power, and
the fell spirit of fanaticism acting upon the minds of
our brethren of the non-slaveholding States, and that
beneath its ruins will be forever buried the hopes of
an admiring world for the political regeneration of
enslaved millions. The fact can nto longer be dis-
guised, that our brethren of the free States, so called,
disregarding the compromises of the constitution-
compromises without which it never would have re-
ceived the sanction of the slaveholding States, are
determined to pursue towards those States a course
of policy, and to adopt a system of legislation by
Congress, destructive of their best rights and most
cherished domestic institutions. In vain have the
citizens of the slave States appealed to their brethren
of the free States, in a spirit of brotherly love and
devotion to that constitution framed by our fathers
and cemented by their blood, as a commoa shield
and protection for the rights of all their descendants.
In vain have they invoked the guarantees of that
sacred instrument, as a barrier to the encroachments
of their brethren upon their rights. The spirit of
forbearance and concession, which has been for more
than thirty years manifested and acted on by the
slaveholding States, has but strengthened the deter-
mination of their Northern brethren, to fasten upon
them a system of legislation in regard to their pecu-
liar domestic relations, as fatal in its effects to their
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521

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