testimony comments to make it intelligible--their _names_ are their
_endorsers_, and their strong words their own interpreters. We waive all
comments. Our readers are of age. Whosoever hath ears to _hear_, let him
HEAR. And whosoever will not hear the fathers of the revolution, the
founders of the government, its chief magistrates, judges, legislators
and sages, who dared and perilled all under the burdens, and in the heat
of the day that tried men's souls--then "neither will he be persuaded
though THEY rose from the dead."

Some of the points established by this testimony are--The universal
expectation that Congress, state legislatures, seminaries of learning,
churches, ministers of religion, and public sentiment widely embodied in
abolition societies, would act against slavery, calling forth the moral
sense of the nation, and creating a power of opinion that would abolish
the system throughout the Union. In a word, that free speech and a free
press would be wielded against it without ceasing and without
restriction. Full well did the South know, not only that the national
government would probably legislate against slavery wherever the
constitution placed it within its reach, but she knew also that Congress
had already marked out the line of national policy to be pursued on the
subject--had committed itself before the world to a course of action
against slavery, wherever she could move upon it without encountering a
conflicting jurisdiction--that the nation had established by solemn
ordinance a memorable precedent for subsequent action, by abolishing
slavery in the northwest territory, and by declaring that it should
never thenceforward exist there; and this too, as soon as by cession of
Virginia and other states, the territory came under congressional
control. The South knew also that the sixth article in the ordinance
prohibiting slavery, was first proposed by the largest slaveholding
state in the confederacy--that in the Congress of '84, Mr. Jefferson, as