Sir, I will present another argument on this subject, and I do not see how any jurist or statesman can invalidate it.
Government is one, but its functions are several. They are legislative, judicial, executive. These functions are coördinate; each supposes the other two. There must be a legislature to enact laws; there must be a judiciary to expound the laws enacted, and point out the individuals against whom they are to be enforced; there must be an executive arm to enforce the decisions of the courts. In every theory of government, where one of these exist, the others exist. Under our constitution they are divided into three parts, and apportioned among three coördinate bodies. Whoever denies one of these must deny them all.
If the government of the United States, therefore, has no right to legislate for the territories, it has no right to adjudicate for the territories; if it has no right to adjudicate, then it has no right to enforce the decisions of the judicial tribunals. These rights must stand or fall together. He who takes from this government the law-making power, in regard to territories, strikes also the balances of justice from the hands of the judge, and the mace of authority from those of the executive. There is no escape from this conclusion. The constitution gives no more authority to adjudge suits in the territories, or to execute the decisions of the territorial courts, than it does to legislate. If Congress has no power over territory, only as land, then what does this land want of judges and marshals? Is it not obvious, then, that this new reading of the constitution sets aside the whole legislative, judicial, and executive administration of this government over territories, since the adoption of the constitution? It makes the whole of it invalid. The Presidents, all members of Congress, all judges upon the bench, have been in a dream for the last sixty years, and are now waked up and recalled to their senses by the charm of a newly-discovered reading of the constitution.
Hitherto, sir, I have not directed my remarks to the actual legislation by Congress on the subject of slavery in the North-western Territory, so called. That territory was consecrated to freedom by the ordinance of 1787. It has been said that the Confederation had no power to pass such an ordinance. But whether this be so or not, is immaterial, for Congress has ratified the ordinance again and again. The first Congress at its first session passed an act whose preamble is as follows: “Whereas, in order that the ordinance of the United States, in Congress assembled, for the government of the territory north-west of the river Ohio, may continue to have full effect,” &c. It then proceeds to modify some parts of the ordinance, and to adopt all the rest.[1]
In the second section of the act of 1800, chapter 41, establishing the Indiana Territory, it is expressly provided that its government shall be “in all respects similar to that provided by the ordinance of 1787.”
In the act of 1802, chapter 40, section 5, authorizing Ohio to form a constitution and state government, this ordinance of 1787 is three times referred to as a valid and existing engagement, and it has always been held to be so by the courts of Ohio.
So in the act of 1816, chapter 57, section 4, authorizing the erection of Indiana into a state, the ordinance is again recognized, and is made a part of the fundamental law of the state.
So in the act of 1818, chapter 67, section 4, authorizing Illinois to become a state.
So in the act of 1805, chapter 5, section 2, establishing the Territory of Michigan.
So of Wisconsin. See act of 1847, chapter 53, in connection with the constitution of Wisconsin.