Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/498

 similar provision having ever been made, or attempted to be made, in relation to any other new state heretofore admitted. The argument drawn from the states formed out of the territory northwest of the river Ohio, he did not consider as analogous; that restriction, if any, was imposed in pursuance of a compact, and only, so far as congress could do, carried into effect the disposition of Virginia in reference to a part of her own original territory, and was, in every respect, more just, because that provision was made and published to the world at a time when but few, if any, settlements were formed within that tract of country; and the children of those people of color belonging to the inhabitants then there have been, and still were, held in bondage, and were not free at a given age, as was contemplated by the amendment under consideration, nor did he doubt but that it was competent for any of those states admitted in pursuance of the ordinance of 1187, to call a convention, and so to alter their constitution as to allow the introduction of slaves, if they thought proper to do so. To those gentlemen who had in their argument, in support of the amendments, adverted to the instance where congress had, by the law authorizing the people of Louisiana to form a constitution and state government, exercised the power of imposing the terms and conditions on which they should be permitted to do so, he would recommend a careful examination and comparison of those terms with the constitution of the United States, when, he doubted not, they would be convinced that these restrictions were only such as were in express and positive language defined in the latter instrument, and would have been equally binding on the people of Louisiana had they not been enumerated in the law giving them authority to form a constitution for themselves.

Mr. Scott said he considered the contemplated conditions and restrictions, contained in the proposed amendments, to be unconstitutional and unwarrantable, from the provisions of the treaty of cession, by the third article of which it was stipulated, that "the inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States, and, in the mean time, they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess."

This treaty having been made by the competent authority of government, ratified by the senate, and emphatically sanctioned by congress in the acts making appropriations to carry it into effect, became a part of the supreme law of the land, and its bearings on the rights of the people had received a practical exposition by the admission of the state of Louisiana, part of the same territory, and acquired by the same treaty of cession, into the Union. It was in vain for gentlemen to tell him that, by the terms of the treaty of cession, the United States were not bound to admit any part of the ceded territory into the Union as a state; the evidence of the obligation congress considered they were under, to adopt states formed out of that territory, is clearly deducible from the fact that they had done so in the instance of Louisiana. But, had