The long wished for time at length arrived when Congress might constitutionally abolish the slave trade, when the third compromise of the Federal Convention was at length to expire, and the most glaring contradiction in our history was to exist for the future only as a recollection of the past, not as a present and pressing disgrace. All parties were alike resolved to seize the happy occasion. Even South Carolina for a while did not venture to disturb the general unanimity, and resigned herself quietly to her fate. But as the course of Congressional legislation never yet ran smoothly, so here a singular notion was started in Committee by which it was proposed to prohibit the traffic by heavy penalties, and yet at the same time to enrich the National treasury by its proceeds. This extraordinary plan proposed, in short, that all slaves captured in our vessels by the United States cruisers, should be forfeited and sold by the United States into perpetual slavery. Yet a plan so preposterous as this, by which the National Government was to be deeply implicated in a crime which it was the very object of the law to prevent, was triumphantly carried by the violence of the southern members through every stage of legislation to the very verge of final passage. Happily for the honor of the country the North was at last aroused from her lethargy, and by a desperate effort obtained a recommitment of the bill even at this latest possible moment; the obnoxious clause was altered into a binding out to service for a term of years in the free States, and the bill came up for final action. What possible objection could be taken to a provision which threw almost the whole burthen on the free States, it is hard indeed to discover; but the idea of emancipating an African, no matter under what circumstances, was altogether too much for the equanimity of southern blood. Their members, as Ellsworth would have expressed it, “immediately flew off into a variety of shapes,” protesting that they would sacrifice their lives rather than submit to it, and that military force should in vain attempt to force it on them. This meaningless declamation was persisted in on the following day upon some minor parts of the Bill providing for the transportation of slaves by coasting vessels, requiring _manifests_ certified by proper officers in order to prevent the obvious danger of deception being practised in this way upon the general Government. The most audacious threats were freely uttered. Randolph, the eccentric member from Virginia, took the lead, gave his singular genius for virulent abuse full scope, and at last concluded by hoping that if the Bill were signed by the President in its present form, not a single southern member would be seen on the floor of the next Congress. The bill was nevertheless signed as it passed, the southern members came back punctually at the opening of the next session, and have with praiseworthy regularity been drawing their