Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/510

 river, appears to them to be a question of the last importance to the future welfare of the United States If the progress of this great evil is ever to be arrested, it seems to the undersigned that this is the time to arrest it. A false step taken now, cannot be retraced; and it appears to us that the happiness of unborn millions rests on the measure which congress on this occasion may adopt. Considering this as no local question, nor a question to be decided by a temporary expediency, but as involving great interests of the whole United States, and affecting deeply and essentially those objects of common defense, general welfare, and the perpetuation of the blessings of liberty, for which the constitution itself was formed, we have presumed, in this way, to offer our sentiments and express our wishes to the national legislature. And as various reasons have been suggested against prohibiting slavery in the new states, it may perhaps be permitted to us to state our reasons, both for believing that congress possesses the constitutional power to make such prohibition a condition, on the admission of a new state into the Union, and that it is just and proper that they should exercise that power.

"And in the first place, as to the constitutional authority of congress. The constitution of the United States has declared 'that congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or 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.' It is very well known that the saving in this clause of the claims of any particular state was designed to apply to claims by the then existing states, of territory which was also claimed by the United States as their own property. It has, therefore, no bearing on the present question. The power, then, of congress over its own territories, is, by the very terms of the constitution, unlimited. It may make all 'needful rules and regulations,' which of course include all such regulations as its own views of policy or expediency shall, from time to time, dictate. If, therefore, in its judgment it be needful for the benefit of a territory to enact a prohibition of slavery, it would seem to be as much within its power of legislation as any other act of local policy. Its sovereignty being complete and universal as to the territory, it may exercise over it the most ample jurisdiction in every respect. It possesses, in this view, all the authority which any state legislature possesses over its own territory; and if any state legislature may, in its discretion, abolish or prohibit slavery within its own limits, in virtue of its general legislative authority, for the same reason congress also may exercise the like authority over its own territories. And that a state legislature, unless restrained by some constitutional provision, may so do, is unquestionable, and has been established by general practice. *****

"The creation of a new state is, in effect, a compact between congress and the inhabitants of the proposed state. Congress would not probably claim the power of compelling the inhabitants of Missouri to form a constitution of their own, and come into the Union as a state. It is as plain, that the inhabitants of that territory have no right of admission into the Union, as a state,