In a short time
after the commencement of their first movement, they had acquired
sufficient influence to induce the legislatures of most of the Northern
States to pass acts, which in effect abrogated the clause of the
Constitution that provides for the delivery up of fugitive slaves. Not
long after, petitions followed to abolish slavery in forts, magazines,
and dock-yards, and all other places where Congress had exclusive
power of legislation. This was followed by petitions and resolutions of
legislatures of the Northern States, and popular meetings, to exclude
the Southern States from all territories acquired, or to be acquired,
and to prevent the admission of any State hereafter into the Union,
which, by its constitution, does not prohibit slavery. And Congress is
invoked to do all this, expressly with the view of the final abolition
of slavery in the States. That has been avowed to be the ultimate object
from the beginning of the agitation until the present time; and yet the
great body of both parties of the North, with the full knowledge of the
fact, although disavowing the abolitionists, have co-operated with them
in almost all their measures.
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