Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/513

 and immunities of citizens of the United States, could be at the same time enjoyed by the same persons. These rights.are different in different states; a right exists in one state which is denied in others, or is repugnant to other rights enjoyed in Others. In some of the states, a freeholder alone is entitled to vote in the elections; in some a qualification of personal property is sufficient; and in others, age and freedom are the sole qualifications of the electors. In some states, no citizen is permitted to hold slaves; in others, he possesses that power absolutely; in others, it is limited. The obvious meaning, therefore, of the clause is, that the rights derived under the federal constitution, shall be enjoyed by the inhabitants of Louisiana in the same manner as by the citizens of other states. The United States, by the constitution, are bound to guarantee to every state in the Union a republican form of government; and the inhabitants of Louisiana are entitled, when a state, to this guarantee. Each state has a right to two senators, and two representatives according to a certain enumeration of population, pointed out in the constitution. The inhabitants of Louisiana, upon their admission into the Union, are also entitled to these privileges. The constitution further declares, "that the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.' It would seem as if the meaning of this clause could not well be misinterpreted. It obviously applies to the case of the removal of a citizen of one state to another state; and in such a case it secures to the migrating citizen all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the state to which he removes. It cannot surely be contended, upon any rational interpretation, that it gives to the citizens of each state all the privileges and immunities of the citizens of every other state, at the same time, and under all circumstances. Such a construction would lead to the most extraordinary consequences. It would at once destroy all the fundamental limitations of the state constitutions upon the rights of their own citizens; and leave all those rights to the mercy of the citizens of any other state, which should adopt different limitations. According to this construction, if all the state constitutions, save one, prohibited slavery, it would be in the power of that single state, by the admission of the right of its citizens to hold slaves, to communicate the same right to the citizens of all the other states within their own exclusive limits, in defiance of their own constitutional prohibitions; and to render the absurdity still more apparent, the same construction would communicate the most opposite and irreconcilable rights to the citizens of different states at the same time. It seems, therefore, to be undeniable, upon any rational interpretation, that this clause of the constitution communicated no rights in any state which its own citizens do not enjoy; and that the citizens of Louisiana, upon their admission into the Union, in receiving the benefit of this clause, would not enjoy higher or more extensive rights than the citizens of Ohio. It would communicate to the former no right of holding slaves except in states where the citizens already possessed the same right under their own state constitutions and laws.

"Upon the whole, the memorialists would most respectfully submit that the