The Constitution did not make the general government censors over the morals or domestic institutions of the several states, nor did it make the states or the citizens thereof censors of the moral or domestic institutions of each other. It was merely a compact formed between sovereign states for the common defence and protection of each other in their rights and liberties, as they existed before its formation.
[CHAPTER IV]
Causes Leading to Secession—Secession of the Cotton States
Very shortly after the organization of the government under the new Constitution, petitions upon the subject of the slave trade began to be presented to Congress, mostly from the Quakers of Pennsylvania, that "non-resisting" sect "conscientiously opposed to all war." Some of the petitions were very inflammatory in their character, and caused much excited debate in the early Congresses, and one presented by Warren Mifflin, a Quaker of Delaware, urging the injustice of slavery and the necessity for its abolition, was returned to him by order of the House at the second session of the second Congress on account of its incendiary and mischievous character.
In January, 1805, the first proposition for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia was made. It was made by Sloan, a democratic representative from New Jersey, and was "that all children born after the ensuing 4th of July should be free at certain ages," but it was refused a reference to a committee and was then rejected by a vote of 77 to 31. It is a little remarkable in view of subsequent events that 26 of the 31 were Northern Democrats, and that only 5 constituting the remainder of the vote for the proposition were Northern Federalists.
After the passage of the acts in the United States and Great Britain abolishing the slave trade, the agitation on the subject of slavery abated very considerably for a number of years, only, however, to be revived at a later period in a more virulent form.
In the year 1812, the state of Louisiana, erected out of the territory of Orleans, was admitted into the Union as a slave state, and that part of the territory east of the Pearl river and bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, was added to the territory of Mississippi. The name of Mississippi was then given to the territory of Louisiana.
In 1816, Indiana was admitted into the Union as a free state, and in 1817, Mississippi was admitted as a slave state, the residue of the territory of that name taking the name of Alabama.