necessary for the master of the slave to recognize his emancipation
by a treaty of peace; can it for an instant be pretended that
Congress, in such a contingency, would have no authority to interfere
with the institution of slavery, in any way, in the States? Why, it
would be equivalent to saying that Congress have no constitutional
authority to make peace. I suppose a more portentous case, certainly
within the bounds of possibility--I would to God I could say, not
within the bounds of probability--"


Mr. Adams here, at considerable length, portrays the danger then
existing of a war with Mexico, involving England and the European
powers, bringing hostile armies and fleets to our own Southern
territory, and inducing not only a foreign war, but an Indian, a
civil, and a servile war, and making of the Southern States "the
battle-field upon which the last great conflict will be fought
between Slavery and Emancipation." "Do you imagine (he asks) that
your Congress will have no constitutional authority to interfere with
the institution of slavery, in any way, in the States of this
Confederacy? Sir, they must and will interfere with it--perhaps to
sustain it by war, perhaps to abolish it by treaties of peace; and
they will not only possess the constitutional power so to interfere,
but they will be bound in duty to do it, by the express provisions of
the Constitution itself. From the instant that your slaveholding
States become the theatre of a war, civil, servile, or foreign, from
that instant, the war powers of Congress extend to interference with
the institution of slavery, in every way by which it can be
interfered with, from a claim of indemnity for slaves taken or
destroyed, to the cession of States burdened with slavery to a
foreign power."--New York Tribune.