The legality of slavery in the District of Columbia has been assumed, and practically acquiesced in, for fifty years. Had the question of its validity been raised, and argued on the principles of the constitution, immediately after the creation of the District, I believe this territory would have been declared free soil. In my conscientious opinion, slavery exists in this District only by original usurpation and subsequent acquiescence. If so, Congress cannot be too speedily invoked to abdicate the power it has usurped. 1. The first position I take is this: _That slavery has no legal existence any where, unless by force of positive law._ If any man claims authority over the body, mind, and soul of one of his fellow-men, and claims this authority not only for the whole life of his victim, but a like authority over all his descendants, there is no part of the civilized world where he will not be required to show some positive law, authorizing the power and the bondage. If the claimant says, “I am stronger, or I am wiser than he;” or, “I have an Anglo-Saxon brain, while he has only an African brain;” or, “my skin is white, and his skin is not white;” or, “I descended from Shem, and he from Ham; and, therefore, he is my slave,”--there is not a court in Christendom, which, though it may admit the fact, will ratify the inference. If the claimant affirms that it is _morally_ right for him to seize his fellow-man and reduce him to slavery; if he brings the Bible into court as his law book, and cites Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob and Paul, as his authorities; still, I say, there is not a court in Christendom that will not deny the validity of the title, and rebuke the arrogance of the demand.[6] Positive law, then, is the only foundation of slavery. The authorities are numerous, if not numberless, to establish this position. I shall not encumber this argument by citing many of them. The few which I shall cite will contain a reference to the rest. The grand reason against slavery given by Lord Mansfield, in Somerset’s case, was, “that it is so intrinsically wrong that it is incapable of being introduced into any country, on any reasons moral or political, and can only stand on positive law.” 20 State Trials, 1. Chief Justice Marshall says, “That it [slavery] is contrary to the law of nature, will scarcely be denied. That every man has a natural right to the fruits of his own labor, is generally admitted; and that no other person can rightfully deprive him of those fruits and appropriate them against his will, seems to be the necessary result of this admission.” Antelope, 10 Wheat., 120.