Call for a Northern Convention

September 18, 1857

Here is a call for citizens of the free states to meet in Convention, in Cleveland. With a clear reference to the Dred Scott Decision, which has so interpreted the Constitution to mean that Congress has no right to “establish freedom, even in the territories”, the men who call for the Convention want to consider the “probability, practicability, and expediency of a “separation of the Free and Slave States”.  The call claims that “Slavery has now gained entire control over the three branches of our National Government, Executive, Judiciary, and Legislative”.