If you make it enter into a new and additional compact, is it
any longer the same Union?
We are told that admitting a State into the Union is a compact. Yes,
but what sort of a compact? A compact that it shall be a member of the
Union, as the Constitution has made it. You cannot new fashion it. You
may make a compact to admit, but when admitted the original compact
prevails. The Union is a compact, with a provision of political power
and agents for the accomplishment of its objects. Vary that compact as
to a new State--give new energy to that political power so as to make it
act with more force upon a new State than upon the old--make the will
of those agents more effectually the arbiter of the fate of a new State
than of the old, and it may be confidently said that the new State has
not entered into this Union, but into another Union. How far the Union
has been varied is another question. But that it has been varied is
clear.
If I am told that by the bill relative to Missouri, you do not legislate
upon a new State, I answer that you do; and I answer further that it is
immaterial whether you do or not.
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