Messrs. Green and Osborne Quincy. Massachusetts Editors of the Quincy Patriot Washington 18. March 1837. Sirs I am unwilling to occupy an undue proportion of the columns of your Paper, and especially upon a subject which may be unwelcome to a large portion of your readers. The efforts of Anti Slavery Societies, prematurely to agitate and urge upon the Congress of this Union the exercise of their power for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, have met with no favour in Quincy, and with very little in the 12th Congressional District of Massachusetts - Far from favouring them myself, if there is any part of my conduct as a public man, which upon rigorous self-examination has been less satisfactory to my own deliberate judgment than the rest, it is the discountenance that I have invariably given to all Petitions for the abolition of slavery - I have never even favoured the Colonization Society, the professed object of which, at least when levying contributions upon the benevolence and humanity of the North, has been the ultimate abolition of [struck: th] slavery - I resisted to the utmost of my power the concession of the right of search for slaves, stipulated and then rejected by our slave-holding statesman in Negotiation with Great Britain - I protested with earnest sincerity, against that most absurd and inconsistent law which makes the slave-trade Piracy, punishable with death, for bringing a slave from Congo to Charleston South Carolina, and a lawful trade [2] to be maintained and defended by this Nation, even at the expence of a War with Great Britain, for carrying the same slave, from Charleston to Bermuda, or the Bahama Islands - All my political opinions concerning the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, have been so far from partaking of enthusiasm or over-zeal, that if there has been any error in my conduct upon the whole subject, it has been that of extending too far those obligations contracted by the bond of our National Union, which restrain the free States of the confederation, and their Citizens from the indulgence of those fervent aspirations for universal emancipation, and the extinction of Slavery upon Earth so congenial to the History of our Revolution and to the progressive improvement of moral principle throughout the world - But my respect and reverence for the right of Petition had been bred in the bone - By the Law of Nature preceding all formation of Constitutions of Government - preceding even the institution of civil society, the right of human weakness to implore relief from human power, was the last of the natural rights of man, which in my opinion could be derived - The history of our revolutionary struggle; the Memory that the disregard and contempt of this right, had been the loudest and bitterest of the reproaches with which our fathers had unsheathed the sword of Independence, had rivetted in my affections, and mingled with every pulsation of my heart, the right of Petition - I had seen it always respected in our Legislative Assemblies, and especially in Congress - For three years after I became a member of the House of Representatives of the United States every [3] Petition for the abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia had been received and referred to some appropriate Committee, and reported upon like other Petitions. In 1834, the first attempt had been made to lay such Petitions on the Table without reference to a Committee and had failed - In 1835 the same attempt had been renewed and succeeded - In 1836 the first struggle to suppress the right of Petition upon all subjects relating to Slavery and the Slave-trade occurred and then I felt myself called upon, by the most indispensable obligations of my duty, not to Support the prayer of the Petitions for the abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia, but to defend from practical abolition, the right of Petition itself. That right is yet in the most imminent danger of being suppressed - At two successive sessions of Congress Resolutions have been adopted by the House of Representatives, that no Petition, memorial, or Paper relating to slavery or the abolition of slavery shall be read - printed - or referred - to which have now been added Resolutions that nearly three millions of native Americans, our Countrymen, and represented by one hundred members on the floor of the house have in no case whatever the right of Petitions - Those enormous abridgements, first of the Object which may be petitioned for; and secondly of the persons entitled to Petition, will not satisfy the slave-holders. They will never be satisfied till the House shall formally refuse to receive any such Petition; and till every member of the House shall be prohibited from offering to present one, upon pain of expulsion. [4] At an early period of the late Session I received Petitions, Signed by nearly one thousand women, Mothers, Sisters, wives and daughters of my immediate constituents - Had I refused or neglected to present them, I should have been unworthy of representing the freemen of Massachusetts, in any assembly upon Earth. - Yet it was upon the question whether those Petitions should be received, that the whole day was consumed in debate, not by me, but by the Slave representation against me and against the Petitioners. I foresaw what the fate of their Petitions would be, and resorted to your paper, to give them notice of it - I had then no anticipation that I should so soon [inserted: be] put upon my own defence against charges of felony and Treason, for the bare exercise of my rights as a member of the House - This soon after occurred - A series of seventeen Resolutions, all having for object a vote of c?nsure by the House upon me consumed three days of the Time of the Nation, and then sustained a signal defeat - But the suppression of all Petitions for the abolition of Slavery was not abandoned - I have been compelled repeatedly to Address all my Constituents, in justification of my own conduct, and to give them warning of the designs which are impending over the exercise of their most precious rights - For this purpose I have again to ask the publications in your paper of the enclosed Address, and of another by which it is to be followed. This letter you are at liberty to publish or to withhold as may be most agreeable to yourselves - I may perhaps deserve to publish also in your Paper, an address to the Petitioners, in other parts of the Commonwealth and of the Union, who thought proper to commit their Petitions to my charge; but of this hereafter; and as my best suit your own views and wishes - In the meantime I remain respectfully Your fellow Citizen and obedt servet John Quincy Adams.