Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/627

 that the article of the annexation of Texas is itself constitutional. I find no authority in the constitution of the United States for the annexation of foreign countries by a resolution of congress, and no power adequate to that purpose but the treaty-making power of the president and the senate. Entertaining this view, I must insist that the constitutionality of the annexation of Texas itself shall be cleared up before I can agree to the admission of any aew states to be formed within Texas.

Mr. Foote. Did I not hear the senator observe that he would admit California, whether slavery was or was not precluded from these territories?

Mr. Seward. I said I would have voted for the admission of California even as a slave state, under the extraordinary circumstances which I have before distinctly described. I say that now; but I say also, that before I would agree to admit any more states from Texas, the circumstances which render such an act necessary must be shown, and must be such as to determine my obligation to do so; and that is precisely what I insist cannot be settled now. It must be left for those to whom the responsibility will belong.

Mr. President, I understand, and I am happy in understanding, that I agree with the honorable senator from Massachusetts, that there is no obligation upon congress to admit four new slave states out of Texas, but that congress has reserved her right to say whether those states shall be formed and admitted or not, I shall rely on that reservation. I shall vote to admit no more slave states, unless under circumstances absolutely compulsory — and no such case is now foreseen.

Mr. Webster. What I said was, that if the states hereafter to be made out of Texas choose to come in as slave states, they have a right so to do.

Mr. Seward. My position is, that they have not a right to come in at all, if congress rejects their institutions. The sub-division of Texas is a matter optional with both parties, Texas and the United States.

Mr. Webster. Does the honorable senator mean to say that congress can hereafter decide whether they shall be slave or free states?

Mr. Seward. I mean to say that congress can hereafter decide whether any states, slave or free, can be framed out of Texas. If they should never be framed out of Texas, they never could be admitted.

Another objection arises out of the principle on which the demand for compromise rests. That principle assumes a classification of the states as northern aud southern states, as it is expressed by the honorable senator from South Carolina, (Mr. Calhoun,) but into slave states and free states, as more directly expressed by the honorable senator from Georgia, (Mr. Berrien.) The argument is, that the states are severally equal, and that these two classes were equal at the first, and that the constitution was founded on that equilibrium; that the states being equal, and the classes of the states being equal in rights, they are to be regarded as constituting an association in which each state, and each of these classes of states, respectively, contribute in due proportions; that the new territories are a common acquisition, and the people of these several states and classes of states have an equal right to participate in them, respectively; that