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A Memorial to the Congress of the United States, on the Subject of Restraining the Increase of Slavery in New States to be Admitted into the Union. Prepared in Pursuance of a Vote of the Inhabitants of Boston and its Vicinity, Assembled at the State House, on the Third of December, A.D. 1819.
Boston: Sewell Phelps, Printer, 1819, first edition, octavo, 22 pages, stitched, untrimmed as issued, several corners dog-eared, short tears into foredge of titlepage and first leaf of text, else in very good, clean condition.
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Daniel
Webster headed the Committee which prepared this Memorial to Congress; its
members also included George Blake, Josiah Quincy, James T. Austin, and John
Gallison. The Memorial contains Webster’s earliest printed expressions
concerning Slavery which grew out of the Crisis over Missouri’s admission to
the Union. Webster supported a Congressional ban on new slave states. The
Boston Memorial expressed Webster’s opinion that Congress was constitutionally
empowered to exclude slavery in new States. Webster later, fearing dissolution
of the Union, pulled back from this position when he supported the Compromise
of 1850. Webster’s arguments in the Memorial became the philosophical doctrine
of Free Soilers and Republicans in the 1840s and 1850s.
