"While the laws of the United States denounce the foreign trade as piracy, and punish with death those who are found engaged in its perpetration, there exists in this District, the Seat of National Government, a domestic slave trade, scarcely less disgraceful in its character and even more demoralizing in its influence. For this is not like the former, carried on against a barbarous nation; its victims are reared up among the People of this Country; educated in the precepts of the same religion; and imbued with similar domestic attachments."15