Should the Senate not incline to this form, there is still another I would suggest:—
“Slavery shall not exist anywhere within the United States or the jurisdiction thereof; and the Congress shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper to carry this prohibition into effect.”
This is simple, and avoids all language open to question. The word “Slavery” is explicit, and describes precisely what you propose to blast. There is no doubt with regard to its signification. It cannot be confounded with “the punishment of crime”; for imprisonment is not Slavery; nor can any punishment take the form of a wrong which stands by itself, peculiar, terrible, outrageous. Therefore nothing about punishment should find place in the rule we now ordain. Beyond this I would avoid technicality, which is out of place in such a text; and here I am encouraged by other examples. An early Constitution of France prohibited Slavery in every form, when it said: “Every man can engage his time and his services, but he cannot sell himself, nor be sold; his person is not alienable property.”[321] That of the Greek nation was equally thorough: “It is not permitted in Greece to sell or to buy men; every slave, whatever may be his nation or religion, is free from the time he puts foot on Greek territory.”[322] Nothing can be simpler than this prohibition in the Bavarian Constitution: “Servitude is everywhere suppressed”;[323] or than this in the Constitution of Wurtemberg: “Serfdom is forever abolished”;[324] or than this in the Constitution of the French Republic in November, 1848: “Slavery cannot exist upon any French soil.”[325] Nor can anything be more simple and thorough than these words from Hayti: “Slaves cannot exist on the territory of the Republic. Slavery there is forever abolished.”[326] Naturally a Republic of enfranchised slaves made this the first article of its Constitution, while sense as well as instinct supplied the form. And, Sir, in all these historic instances you will remark that there is nothing technical.
If the Senate is determined to follow the Jeffersonian Ordinance, then I prefer that it should be the Ordinance actually, and not as reported by the Committee. And I would complete the work by expelling from the Constitution all those words so often misconstrued, perverted, and tortured to a false support of Slavery.
But while desirous of seeing the great rule of Freedom we are about to ordain embodied in a text which shall be like the precious casket to the more precious treasure, yet I confess that I feel humbled by my own endeavors. And whatever the judgment of the Senate, I am consoled by the thought that the most homely text containing such a rule will be more beautiful far than any word of poet or orator, and will endure to be read with gratitude, when the lofty dome of this Capitol, with the statue of liberty which crowns it, has crumbled to earth.