tory were, Ohio, admitted April 30th, 1802; Indiana, Dec. 11th, 1816; Illinois, Dec. 3d, 1818.

The question of Slavery was not materially discussed upon the admission of any of those States into the Union, which were formed out of Territory comprehended within the precincts of the United · States at the adoption of the Constitution. Still, it must be observed, that in the Compact for their admission, the integrity of the Articles contained in the Ordinance of 1787 was stipulated as a condition precedent to their admission.

Louisiana was the first State formed out of the Territory ceded by France to the United States. The existence of Slavery within her limits was so general that her admission into the Union as a Slave State did not give rise to any particular controversy with reference to it; And it must be admitted that with even this addition to its numerical strength in the United States, a great deal had been accomplished in the way of suppressing Slavery generally, by the purchase of this Territory. It was thus brought under the Act prohibiting the Slave Trade, as well as other restrictive laws of the United States in reference to it. In this view alone, the evil of its extension if it can properly be called an extension of it, was more than counterbalanced by the prohibitions and restraints to which it became subject under the jurisdiction of the United States. The

exaction that her laws, judicial proceedings, and records, should be in the same language used in the United States, might well be regarded as a sufficient equivalent for the recognition given to Slavery, and the protection guaranteed to the ownership of her Slave property, under the Laws of the United States. All this, however, be it remembered, was the subject of a new compact between the proposed State of Louisiana and the National Sovereignty. It could not be claimed or conceded under the Constitution.

CHAPTER II.

SLAVERY OUTSIDE OF THE CONSTITUTION.

I.

THE Confederation was a compact between the Colonies as States claiming an independence of each other as well as of Great Britain. The Constitution was a compact between the people of the United States claiming in themselves a Sovereignty independent both of the State and Federal Supremacy. Hence the great defect of the Confederation was, that the. Sovereignty wrested from Great Britain was given to the States in severalty, while no provision was made for a National Government of supreme

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authority and general jurisdiction. The Constitution was designed to remedy this defect, and was based on the theory of an existing National Sovereignty in the people of the Thirteen Original States, acquired by conquest from Great Britain, and limited in its jurisdiction and supremacy only by the precincts described in the Definitive Treaty executed between the Commissioners of the two nations at Paris, September third, 1783.

The Constitutional National Sovereignty of The United States, therefore, was in the Confederacy composed of the people of those Original States alone. Upon every admission of a new State into this Union, from that day to the present, this distinctive Sovereignty has not only been distinctly recognized, but also emphatically declared, in the compact of admission "on an equal footing with the Original States."

If then, the admission of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky, did not create a National Sovereignty different from that recognized and provided for by the Constitution, the same cannot be said of the admission of Louisiana. Not only was this state the offspring of a jurisdiction extended beyond the Constitutional limit, but its admission into the Union "on an equal footing with the Original States," was an addition to the National Confederacy, which made its government a new and

a different National Sovereignty from that contemplated by the Constitution. Hence, all its acts done in its Sovereign capacity, must be considered as done independently of any original Constitutional authority, whether made, or purporting to be made, in conformity with the general principles of the Constitution or not.

This peculiarity in the formation and character of our National Government, is especially important to be observed in considering this question of Slavery, in connection with the admission of new States into the Union, if we would arrive at a correct comprehension of the theory of its National recognition and relations. I have shown this theory under the Constitution to have been one of restriction and not of expansion, and that it was limited, in its practical application, to the Original precincts of the United States as established under the Definitive Treaty with Great Britain. The acquisition of the Louisiana Territory was the introduction of a new Slavepopulation within the embrace of our National Sovereignty, the existence and ownership of which claimed anew its National recognition and protection. This was guaranteed to the existing servitude in the State of Louisiana by the compact for her admission into the Union. But that, strictly speaking, could not be called an extension of Slavery itself, inasmuch as it already had an existence there

before the cession of the Territory to the United States by France. The real material question of its extension originated with the application of the people inhabiting in the Territory called the Territory of Missouri, to be admitted into the Union as a State. The origin and history of this application, therefore, is both interesting and important in this connection.

But before entering upon it I would premisethat every new member admitted into union with the Original States, out of Territory foreign to the original domain of those States and of the United States, must necessarily be subject to a new and distinct political compact for its admission, made between it and the said Original States; or, between it and the States composing the National Sovereignty at the time of its admission. It could not derive any claim to admission by virtue of any provision in the Constitution, for neither it, or the now existing Confederacy, was known to the Constitution. this respect evidently it differed in position from a State formed out of Territory within the original, recognized, Constitutional domain; and for whose admission provision was expressly made in the Constitution. Hence the right of the New Confederacy to dictate terms and impose conditions in the former case, beyond the strict letter of the Constitution, which

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