Since, by that
cession, this land passed under the exclusive control of the Federal
government, the "institution" within this ten miles square could no
longer be defended by the plea of State sovereignty, and antislavery
sentiment naturally demanded that it should cease. Pro-slavery
statesmen, on the other hand, as persistently opposed its removal,
partly as a matter of pride and political consistency, partly because it
was a convenience to Southern senators and members of Congress, when
they came to Washington, to bring their family servants where the local
laws afforded them the same security over their black chattels which
existed at their homes. Mr. Lincoln, in his Peoria speech in 1854,
emphasized the sectional dispute with this vivid touch of local color:
"The South clamored for a more efficient fugitive-slave law. The North
clamored for the abolition of a peculiar species of slave trade in the
District of Columbia, in connection with which, in view from the windows
of the Capitol, a sort of negro livery-stable, where droves of negroes
were collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to Southern markets,
precisely like droves of horses, had been openly maintained for fifty
years."
Thus the question remained a minor but never ending bone of contention
and point of irritation, and excited debate arose in the Thirtieth
Congress over a House resolution that the Committee on the Judiciary be
instructed to report a bill as soon as practicable prohibiting the slave
trade in the District of Columbia.
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