Excerpt from Slavery in the Territories: Speech of Mr. Jenkins, of New York, on the Mexican Treaty; Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 17, 1849

I am aware that this subject is not agreeable to many for whom I have a high respect. I can make allowance for difference in education, and doubt not the fre quent exercise of humanity in the master. I am not called Upon to speak of slavery in the States where it now exists; when those States came into the Union, no power over the subject was reserved to the General Government, and hence this power belongs to such States exclusively. But in discussing the expediency and the right Of extending this institution into free territory, it would he unpardon able in a legislator to shut his eyes against any thing legitimately bearing on the question.

The charge, that the agitation of this subject tends to affect slave property in the Southern States is true to a certain extent. It is like the influence produced bygjhe emancipation of our own country from the thraldom of Great Britain upon shveral nations in Europe. So will the policy pursued by our Government in te gard to these newly acquired Territories, produce some moral effect upon the slave holding States themselves. Even the emancipation Of the slaves in the Northern States must have produced some influence in the South. I am not surprised that the emancipation of slaves by Mexico, the South American Republics, England, and Denmark, should press somewhat upon the Southern States, and produce a restiveness occasioned by the spread of principles hostile to this institution. This progress of freedom to the slave illy prepared the mind of the slaveholder for the intelligence that republican France, among her first legislative enactments, ex tended to her slaves the same liberty which she had won for her own citizens; and ratified the deed by inserting in her Constitution the short but comprehensive and memorable article, that slavery cannot exist in any territory belonging to France. Though this general progress of liberty may produce some effect in the South, it is demanding too much that all that the world is doing for liberal princi ples should stop on that account. Can the South ask more than the pledge, that slavery in the States where it now is, shall not be interfered with.

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