Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/681

 a state, a convention of delegates, duly elected by the qualified voters, shall assemble to frame a constitution, and thus to prepare, through regular and lawful means, for its admission into the Union as a state. I respectfully recommend the enactment of a law to that effect.

I recommend, also, that a special appropriation be made to defray any expense which may become requisite in the execution of the laws or the maintenance of public order in the territory of Kansas.

This message of the president was referred to the committee on territories in the senate, and on the 12th of March, Mr. Douglas, from the committee, made an elaborate report, from which we have room only for a few extracts. Mr. Douglas attributed the origin of the difficulties in Kansas to the emigrant aid societies:

Your committee deem this an appropriate occasion to state briefly, but distinctly, the principles upon which new states may be admitted and territories organized under the authority of the constitution of the United States.

The constitution (section 3, article 4) provides that "new states may be admitted by the congress into this Union."

Section 8, article 1: "Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers vested by this constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or office thereof."

10th amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

A state of the federal Union is a sovereign power, limited only by the constitution of the United States.

The limitations which that instrument has imposed are few, specific, and uniform—applicable alike to all the states, old and new. There is no authority for putting a restriction upon the sovereignty of a new state which the constitution has not placed on the original states. Indeed, if such a restriction could be imposed on any state, it would instantly cease to be a state within the meaning of the federal constitution, and, in consequence of the inequality, would assimilate to the condition of a province or dependency. Hence, equality among all the states of the Union is a fundamental principle in our federative system—a principle embodied in the constitution, as the basis upon which the American Union rests.

African slavery existed in all the colonies, under the sanction of the British government, prior to the declaration of independence. When the constitution of the United States was adopted, it became the supreme law and bond of union between twelve slaveholding states and one non-slaveholding state. Each state reserved the right to decide the question of slavery for itself—to continue it as a domestic institution so long as it pleased, and to abolish it when it chose.

In pursuance of this reserved right, six of the original slaveholding states