The moment they put their feet on board of a British man-of-war, not lying within the waters of East Florida, (where undoubtedly the laws of that country would prevail,) those persons who had before been slaves were free....

But in some governments the law of the state, upheld by the power of the state, overrides the law of nature, and enslaves a portion of the people.

The law of nature recedes before this legalized violence; but it recedes no farther than the legalized violence drives it back.

Within the jurisdictional limits of such states, then, slavery is made legal, though it is not made right.

But if a slave passes out of the jurisdiction where violence overpowers right, into a jurisdiction where right is superior to violence, he is then free; not because there is any change in the man, but because there is a change in the laws…

The debates in all the conventions for adopting the constitution of the United States, proceed upon the ground that slavery depends upon positive law for its existence.

If it did not,--if a man who has a legal right to a slave in Virginia, has a legal right to him anywhere,--then the provision in the constitution, and the act of 1793 for recapturing fugitive slaves, would have been unnecessary.

On the south side of a boundary line, then, slavery may exist by force of positive law; while, on the north side, in the absence of any such law, slavery is unlawful.

A slave passing out of a jurisdiction where slavery is legalized, into a jurisdiction where it is not, becomes free.

Like the right to life, it pertains, by the law of nature and of God, to every human being.

Some act abolishing this freedom, then, must be proved; it must be proved affirmatively, or else the fact of freedom remains.

This is the solid and indestructible ground of the maxim, that slavery can exist only by positive law; that it is a local institution; that the right of freedom must first be abolished before slavery can exist.

My second position is this: That a man’s legal condition may be changed by a change in the government over him, while he remains in the same place, just as effectually as it can be changed by his removal to another place, and putting…

It cannot mean absolute and uncontrolled; for, if it did, it would make Congress as sovereign as the Russian autocrat.

It means that no other government, no other body of men whatever, shall have concurrent power of legislation over the District; nor, indeed, any subordinate power, except what may be derived from Congress.

There are two governments that have the power to legislate for him; but there is only one power,--the Congress of the United States,--that can legislate for a citizen of the District of Columbia.

It makes all the difference in the world, whether words are used by one possessed of power, or by one devoid of power.

Congress might pass a law in precisely the same words as those used by the Parliament of Great Britain, and yet the law of Congress be invalid and inoperative, while the act of Parliament would be valid and binding.

We have a written constitution; Great Britain has no written constitution.

The law of Congress might be unconstitutional and void, while that of the British Parliament, framed in precisely the same language, might be constitutional and binding.

So the law of Maryland might be valid under the constitution of Maryland, and, therefore, binding upon the citizens of Maryland; while the law of Congress, though framed in precisely the same words, would be repugnant to the constitution…

Congress, in attempting to reënact the Maryland laws, to uphold slavery in this District, transcended the limits of its constitutional power.

It acted in plain contravention of some of the plainest and most obvious principles consecrated by the constitution.

I do not deny, then, that Congress used words of sufficient amplitude to cover slavery; but what I deny is, that it had any power to give legal force to those words.

So far from facilitating the increase of individual or national wealth, slavery retards both.