| Summary: | In the speech Bowdon discusses recent legislative debate concerning the expansion of slavery into the country's new states and territories. He argues that since slaves are property, the government should protect their owners' rights in any land within the jurisdiction of the United States: "Are the political rights of the slaveholding States respected, when the Government assumes to locate and distribute the sources of their strength? Suppose Congress, to aggrandize the South, should preclude the inhabitants of the free States from removing with their property to regions acquired by the joint blood and treasure of the nation. Every freeman of the North would buckle on his armor, and, gathering fresh courage from the recollections of the past, wage a war of extermination against his oppressors....But this odious distinction affects individuals as well as States. Is the right of the owner protected when he is compelled to abandon his slaves, in order to remove to the common domain of the Union? Surely no such invidious discrimination was contemplated by the framers of the Constitution. It is at war with every principle of equality and fairness."
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