To contend that there is any power given in the Constitution which enables the slaveholder to take his slaves with him into a Territory, and not only his slaves, but his slave laws, and the slave laws of all the slave States, is an assumption of power that I am not willing to concede to him.
Tompkins critiques the assumption that the Constitution grants slaveholders the power to bring slaves and their laws into new territories.
Share
More from Cydnor Tompkins
But if you think that Constitution violated, you have your remedy.
Men who commit acts declared by the whole civilized world to be piracy, you permit to escape, while you say you will hang the man who circulates Helper's book.
The agricultural, the manufacturing, the great commercial interests of this country, are entirely ignored, neglected, and forgotten, that the interests of one hundred thousand slaveholders may be advanced.
I have also endeavored to show what are the aims and objects of the Republican party; and if they cannot be tolerated--if such principles cannot be sustained by the people of any section of this country--it is the misfortune of that people.
Other voices in this conversation
