Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/682

 have since abolished and prohibited slavery within their limits respectively, without consulting congress or their sister states; while the other six have retained and sustained it as a domestic institution which, in their opinion, had become so firmly engrafted on their social systems that the relation between the master and slave could not be dissolved with safety to either. In the mean time eighteen new states have been admitted into the Union, in obedience to the federal constitution, on an equal footing with the original states, including, of course, the right of each to decide the question of slavery for itself. In deciding this question, it has so happened that nine of these new states have abolished and prohibited slavery, while the other nine have retained and regulated it. That these new states had at the time of their admission, and still retain, an equal right under the federal constitution with the original states, to decide all questions of domestic policy for themselves, including that of African slavery, ought not to be seriously questioned, and certainly cannot be successfully controverted.

They are all subject to the same supreme law, which, by the consent of each, constitutes the only limitation upon their sovereign authority.

Since we find the right to admit new states enumerated among the powers expressly delegated in the constitution, the question arises, whence does congress derive authority to organize temporary government for the territories preparatory to their admission into the Union on an equal footing with the original states? Your committee are not prepared to adopt the reasoning which deduces the power from that other clause of the constitution, which says:

"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."

The language of this clause is much more appropriate when applied to property than to persons. It would seem to have been employed for the purpose of conferring upon congress the power of disposing of the public lands and other property belonging to the United States, and to make all needful rules and regulations for that purpose, rather than to govern the people who might purchase those lands from the United States and become residents thereon. The word "territory" was an appropriate expression to designate that large area of public lands of which the United States had become the owner by virtue of the revolution and the cession by the several states. The additional words, "or other property belonging to the United States," clearly shows that the term "territory" was used in its ordinary geographical sense, to designate the public domain, and not as descriptive of the whole body of the people constituting a distinct political community, who have no representation in congress, and consequently no voice in making the laws upon which all their rights and liberties would depend, if it were conceded that congress had the general and unlimited power to make all "needful rules and regulations concerning" their internal affairs and domestic concerns. It is under this clause of the constitution, and from this alone, that congress derives