You can prescribe no terms which will make
the compact of Union between it and the original States essentially
different from that compact among the original States. You may admit, or
refuse to admit: but if you admit, you must admit a State in the sense
of the Constitution--a State with all such sovereignty as belongs to the
original parties: and it must be into this Union that you are to admit
it, not into a Union of your own dictating, formed out of the existing
Union by qualifications and new compacts, altering its character and
effect, and making it fall short of its protecting energy in reference
to the new State, whilst it acquires an energy of another sort--the
energy of restraint and destruction.
* * * * *
One of the most signal errors with which the argument on the other side
has abounded, is this of considering the proposed restriction as if
levelled at the introduction or establishment of slavery. And hence the
vehement declamation, which, among other things, has informed us that
slavery originated in fraud or violence.
Pages:
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93