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�To the Honourable, The Legistlature of the State of Maine:

The Memorial of the "American Convetion for promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and improving the condition of the African race," assembled at Washington, in the District of Columbia, Respectfully Represents,--That feeling a strong solicitude to advance the object for which they are associated, your memorialists approach your honorable body for its concurrence and aid upon a matter which they conceive to be a great interest to the American people. That the existence of slavery within the United States is a great evil and one for which an adequate remedy is, of all national objects, the most to be desired, is a truth in which the whole body of our fellow-citizens have for a long time acquiesced; but whether its ultimate and entire removal is ever to be effected, compatibly with that justice to the parties concered upon which it should be based, is a problem that remains to be solved, but to which philanthropists are now daily directing their attention. The success however which has attended the efforts of many of the States of the Union, who at an early period of our national history were encumbered by the same evil in a lesser degree but who have since been successful in removing it, induce a hope in your memorialists that slavery may be abolished in the District of Columbia. That if possible it ought[italicized} to be, some interesting considerations of local character, peculiarly dictate. The significant and pecular silenece discovered upon the face of the constitutional compact of the land, upon the great subject of human servitude with which the country was then burthened, the care which was observed by the sages who framed the instrument, not to employ a term in its structure which might in after years and in times of universal freedom, be appealed to for the purpose of accusation or reproach, enjoin it, we think as a strong and imperative duty to their successors to remove this growing evil from the seat of the councils of the nation and the limits emphatically of the national domain. Without therefore attempting to interfere with the exclusive duties of state sovereignties, it is incumbent we think upon national legislators, to give effect to the noble and benign spirit of the great charter under which they are convened, by devising and enacting measures for a moment believe that it is a subject upon which local situation can give rise to any diversity of sentiment among Americans at large. The dictates of patriotic pride and of national consistency must have the same effect with all of them.