Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v6.djvu/39

 1860] AT COOPER UNION 17

the Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the ordinance of '87, including the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. The bill for this act was reported by one of the "thirty-nine" — Thomas Fitzsimmons, then a member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages with- out a word of opposition, and finally passed both branches without ayes and nays, which is equiv- alent to a unanimous passage. In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, Nicholas Oilman, Wm. S. John- son, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, William Pater son, George Clymer, Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, and James Madison.

This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor any- thing in the Constitution, properly forbade Con- gress to prohibit slavery in the Federal territory ; else both their fidelity to correct principle, and their oath to support the Constitution, would have constrained them to oppose the prohibition.

Again, George Washington, another of the "thirty-nine," was then President of the United States, and as such approved and signed the bill, thus completing its validity as a law, and thus showing that, in his understanding, no line divid- ing local from Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Govern- ment to control as to slavery in Federal territory.

No great while after the adoption of the original Constitution, North Carolina ceded to the Federal Goyernment the country now con-