EQUALITY OF THE STATES AND CITIZENS.
The equality of the sovereign States which compose the American Republic, and the equality of the citizens, both in the States and the Territories, constitute the true and only bond of union for the American people. This equality is the foundation stone upon which our whole social and political superstructure rests. To call this in question is to menace the very existence of the Union which is founded upon it. The sovereignty of the Union, extending over the Territories, where no other sovereignty exists, is the panoply of protection to all the inhabitants of the Territories. There they are all equal in person and property. There they are not sovereign, but subjects under the sovereignty of the united confederacy of States, which have no individual superiority and right in the Territories, neither for themselves, nor their citizens. For the inhabitants of such Territories to assume a sovereignty therein, not in accordance with the Constitution of the United States, not in conformity to law, and in violation of the equality of the people of the States there congregated, is usurpation. Nor can the democracy of numbers, nor the will of the majority of inhabitants congregated in such Territories be invoked to decide the rights of the people of the several States congregated in such Territories, either as to persons or property; because the sovereignty of the Union holds, until superseded by the sovereignty of a State constitutionally organized, deriving its sovereignty from the supreme authority of the confederated States, by whose assent alone the primordial sovereignty of the Union is so far abandoned as to admit the exercise of State sovereignty in such Territories. There would be no propriety nor justice in allowing an hypothetical sovereignty to a few thousands of individuals congregated in a large Territory, not one fiftieth part of which they occupied; allowing them to establish a rule of exclusion of the persons or property of the people of a portion of the States coming to settle in the Territories. Such persons have neither the right to decide for the present, nor the future; because at present they are not sovereign, and certainly they should not be allowed to exercise a usurped authority over the millions who shall occupy those Territories in the future. It is a morbid desire to forestall the future, in its judgment of barbarism, and of its fitness to subserve civilization, that creates the present animosity between the citizens of the different sections of the Union, going into the Territories. This is all wrong. The sovereignty of the Union is the present, and the sovereignty of States the future arbiter of the rights of the people in the Territories; all other power is assumed, arbitrary, gratuitous, and in violation of legitimate, delegated constitutional power.
The wisdom of the sages who founded the American Union left nothing for experiment to their successors, so far as the absolute equality of American citizens is concerned; and there is no safety but in the recognition of that perfect equality which the spirit of our race demands, and which the power of the civilized world will be invoked to maintain.