back to the precise position it occupied on the day that Washington took his first oath as President of the United States, when there was no Fugitive Act, and the national flag, as it floated over the national territory within the jurisdiction of Congress, nowhere covered a single slave. And now, Sir, as an effort in the true direction of the Constitution, in the hope of beginning the divorce of the National Government from Slavery, and to remove all occasion for the proposed measure under consideration, I shall close these remarks with a motion to repeal the Fugitive Act. Twice already, since I have had the honor of a seat in this chamber, I have pressed that question to a vote, and I mean to press it again to-night. After the protracted discussion involving the character of this enactment, such a motion belongs logically to this occasion, and fitly closes its proceedings. At a former session, on introducing this proposition, I discussed it at length, in an argument which I fearlessly assert never has been answered, and now, in this debate, I have already touched upon various objections. There are yet other things which might be urged. I might exhibit abuses which have occurred under the Fugitive Act,--the number of free persons it has doomed to Slavery, the riots it has provoked, the brutal conduct of its officers, the distress it has scattered, the derangement of business it has caused,--interfering even with the administration of justice, changing courthouses into barracks and barracoons, and filling streets with armed men, amidst which law is silent. All these things I might expose. But in these hurried moments I forbear. Suffice it to say, that the proposition to repeal the existing Fugitive Act stands on fundamental principles which no debate or opposition can shake.