[Footnote A: "Large establishments have grown up upon the national
domain, provided with prisons for the safe keeping of negroes till a
full cargo is procured; and should, at any time, the factory prisons be
insufficient, the public ones, erected by Congress, are at the service
of the dealers, and the United States Marshal becomes the agent of the
slave trade."--_Judge Jay's View of the action of the Federal Government
in behalf of Slavery_, _page_ 93. "But the climax of infamy is still
untold. This trade in blood,--this buying, imprisoning, and exporting of
boys and girls eight years old,--this tearing asunder of husbands and
wives, parents and children,--is all legalized, in virtue of authority
delegated by Congress!! The 249th page of the laws of the city of
Washington is polluted by the following enactment, bearing date 28th
July, 1838:--'For a _license_ to trade or traffic in slaves for profit,
four hundred dollars.'"--_Ibid_, _page_ 98.]

The District of Columbia is the chief seat of the American slave trade;
commercial enterprize has no other object! Washington is one of the best
supplied and most frequented slave marts in the world. The adjoining and
once fertile and beautiful States of Virginia and Maryland, are now
blasted with sterility, and ever-encroaching desolation. The curse of
the first murderer rests upon the planters, and the ground will no
longer yield to them her strength. The impoverished proprietors find now
their chief source of revenue in what one of themselves expressly
termed, their "crop of human flesh." Hence the slave-holding region is
now divided into the "slave-breeding," and "slave-consuming" States.
From its locality, and, from its importance as the centre of public
affairs, the District of Columbia has become the focus of this dreadful
traffic, which almost vies with the African slave trade itself in extent
and cruelty, besides possessing aggravations peculiarly its own.[A] Its
victims are marched to the south in chained coffles, overland, in the