Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Executive Communication: Enclosing a Communication From the Executive of the State of Virginia, Relative to Fugitives
The report and resolutions which have been communicated to your excellency, will apprise you of the general views entertained in reference to this controversy, by the last general assembly of this state, and by the governor of New York. Fortunately for the slaveholding states, the question involved, 'has been so distinctly and emphatically settled by the plain terms of the federal constitu tion, that it is impossible for the ingenuity or the prejudices ofthe human mind, to deny, or evade, our just demand, 1v1th0ut doing manifest violence to that Sacred instrument. The slaveholding states stand now precisely where they stood when the constitution was submitted by the convention of 1787, and ratified by all the states, claiming the same rights and no more, which every state then readily conceded to us; and it seems to me that the question which has been forced on us by the refusal of the governor ofnew York to abide by the constitution, is one on which we can have little to apprehend from thejustice and patriottsni, even of the non slaveholding states. It is not a question whether slavery ought originally to have been introduced, or should continue to exist in this country. If it were, many of the States whose policy on this subject differs from our own, could not fail to recollect their agen cy in introducing the present system of slavery, andthe Very re cent periods at which some of them, and particularly New York, have abolished 'it within their own berders. The question is, whether the constitution shall continue to afford to the slavehold ing states, that protection which Was expected by us and designed by all the states. It is well known, that, though most of the states held slaves at the period when our Union was formed, 'yet the sub ject of our slave population was the chief and most perplexing dit fioulty with the framers of' the constitution. This was thengas it is now, one ofthose subjects where it is easier to feel than to rea son, where misguided passion may meditate and accomplish more mischief than the judgment can redress, where the sacred names of philanthropy and religion may be invoked by demons, to cover the blood-stain of their impious and cruel designs.
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