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 of the United States on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever," and also including a number of provisions, in the nature of a Bill of Rights, among which are the following: "No man shall be deprived of his liberty or property but by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land." "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; provided always that any person escaping into the same from whom service or labor is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor as aforesaid." The power of the congress of the Confederation to pass this ordinance, and to provide for the admission of new States into the confederacy, having been doubted, the following clauses were introduced into the Constitution:

"New States may be admitted by the congress into this Union, but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State, nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States or parts of States, without the consent of the legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the congress."

"The congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory and other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice the claims of the United States or of any particular State."

The first congress of the United States, under the Constitution, at its first session, passed an act, the express purpose of which, as declared in the preamble, was that the Ordinance of 1787 should continue to have full effect. At the second session of this congress, a grant from North Carolina of lands south of the Ohio was accepted, and an act was passed for the government of the ceded Territory. Similar acts were soon afterwards passed for the government of the Mississippi Territory, in which the State of Georgia claimed rights which were afterwards compromised. Upon the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory by treaty from France in 1803, of the Florida Territory from Spain in 1819, and of New Mexico from Mexico in 1848, congress passed similar acts organizing territorial governments over these countries, and has ever since continued to govern them in the same manner, until their admission into the Union as States.

Whence is the power derived, which has been so