Jay's next step was to draft the memorial to Congress ordered by the Westchester resolutions. It declared: "The outrage offered to a citizen of this county, and a violation of the constitutional rights involved in that outrage, affords to the meeting new and strong evidences of the impropriety of the continuance of slavery in the District of Columbia. As citizens of the republic, professing to acknowledge that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, your petitioners cannot but regard it as derogatory to the government of the country that its laws should violate any of these rights in a territory under its exclusive jurisdiction. To your honourable body was given by the Constitution the exclusive jurisdiction in all cases whatever over that District, and your right and ability to grant the prayer of these petitioners cannot be called in question, and the confined limit of the District and the comparatively small number of slaves it contains obviates the objections sometimes urged against sudden emancipation. "Your petitioners therefore earnestly entreat your honourable body that the government of this great republic, glorying as it does in acknowledging and protecting the rights of mankind, diffusing the blessings of freedom, may no longer by law withhold these rights and blessings from any portion of the inhabitants of its own immediate territory, but in the exercise of your prerogative you will immediately provide for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia in such manner as in your wisdom may seem best." The publication of the Westchester resolutions elicited no unfavourable comments at the North, but it gave no little disquietude to Southern editors, two of whom declared that black persons travelling in the South should carry proofs of their freedom, as whites in Europe were compelled to carry passports. The introduction of the subject into Congress, even at that day, when there was no excitement at the North on the subject of slavery, brought out the susceptibility and dictatorial tone of the slaveholding interest which marked all subsequent debates up to the election of Lincoln.