Wherever there is a foot of land to be staid back from slavery! Every occasion to be used to oppose the extension of the slave power! New States to abolish the inequality of slavery, or be excluded! I suppose Northern conservatives of the class referred to have endorsed those doctrines and declarations of Mr. Webster a thousand times, as sound, national, conservative, and constitutional. But no Republican, so far as I know, has ever proposed to go an inch beyond the line of policy they indicated. The Chicago, or Republican Platform, certainly does not. And yet that same line of policy, when advocated by Republicans, is denounced as unsound, sectional, radical, and unconstitutional.
We have a great deal said about the equality of the States; of the new with the original States. This is said to be a fundamental doctrine of the Constitution.
It is claimed that citizens of the slaveholding States have an equal right in the Territories with the citizens of the non-slaveholding States; and I admit they have. But it is also claimed that they have the same right to the protection of property in slaves as property in cotton. This I deny. There is no such doctrine of State equality in the Constitution, nor was any thing like it contemplated by its framers. On the contrary, the Constitution denied this doctrine by clear implication, certainly for the first twenty years. It withheld from Congress the power to prohibit the importation of slaves into the "existing" States till 1808, while their importation into the Territories and new States might be prohibited at once. Ohio was admitted in 1802. Congress had power to prohibit the importation of slaves into that State from that time, and did do it in effect by the very terms and conditions of her admission, which required that her Constitution and Government should not be repugnant to the ordinance of the 13th of July, 1787, which interdicted slavery. But Congress had no power to prohibit the importation of slaves into Georgia till after 1808. Georgia and Ohio, therefore, in this respect, were not political equals from 1802 to 1808.
Nor have the States been all political equals in the sense claimed, since 1808. It will surprise many to be told that there is nothing in the Constitution about State equality, and especially nothing that affirms the equality of the new with the original States, even after 1808. And yet this is true. The only passages which refer to the new States, except impliedly in the importation clause, are these: "New States may be admitted by Congress into the Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State." There is nothing, certainly, in this language to show that the new States were to be admitted on an equality, or an equal footing with the original States.
And yet provision was made, when the Constitution was framed, for the admission of all the new States to be formed in United States Territory then possessed, "on an equal footing with the original States." But it was a footing of equality which was in nowise inconsistent with an absolute denial of the right to establish the inequality of slavery. And this is proved by the only compact in the English language contemporaneous with the Constitution which touches the subject, namely, that part of the fifth article of compact in the ordinance of 1787 which I have already quoted. There can be no shadow of claim that any thing else secured, or pretended to secure, the right of new States to admission into the Union on an equal footing with the original States. That, I admit, did. It is, to repeat it, in these words:
"Whenever any of said States shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants therein, such State shall be admitted, by its delegates, into the Congress of the United States, on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever, and shall be at liberty to form a permanent Constitution and State Government; provided the Constitution and Government so to be formed, shall be republican in conformity to the principles of these articles," the 6th, which prohibited slavery, included.
And this is all there is, contemporaneous with the Constitution, on the subject of the equality of the States. The very instrument, then, which secured the admission of new States, on an equal footing with the original States, itself provided that they were never to tolerate slavery.
The new States, then, neither were to have, nor have they, any political equality which the prohibition violates, as Southern gentlemen contend. Certainly those formed and admitted under the plan of Government devised by the fathers, have not. In this sense they are not political equals. The original States were, from the beginning, and have ever been, political equals in this and every sense. Not, however, because the Constitution says they are, for it says nothing on the subject; but because they were independent sovereignties, and as such, made a compact which united them under one Federal Government, with discriminating restrictions upon the subject of slavery, or upon any other subject. But the fact that the evil and inequality of slavery existed in the original States, and was tolerated from necessity, was no reason why it should be allowed in the Territories and new States, where it did not and need never exist. So the power of the Territories and new States was sufficiently restricted to secure equality in personal rights and freedom to all the "inhabitants." Of course it cannot be pretended that the mere fact that one or more States had established, and had power to perpetuate slavery, secured to new States the right to establish and perpetuate the same enormity, as a necessary result of State equality. That would make the right or power of one State, resulting from State equality, necessarily coextensive with tolerated evil in another. Manifestly "the fathers" had no such idea as this. Theirs was the common sense and rational idea that a moral and political evil which existed in the old States, and could not be removed, need not for that reason be tolerated in new States.
The Constitution guarantees to each State a republican form of Government merely; but the ordinance of 1787 provides that the "Constitution and Government of each new State shall be republican." Why this difference? In the original States slavery existed, or in most of them; and so far they were anti-republican in fact and practice, though republican in form. The framers of the Constitution, having no power to abolish this anti-republican institution of slavery in those States, did nothing more than guarantee them Governments republican in form. But having the power to exclude it from the new States, they did exclude it, and provided that their constitutions and governments should be republican. That this was the reason for the difference may be inferred from the remark of Luther Martin, a distinguished member of the Federal Convention, that "slavery is inconsistent with the genius of republicanism," and of General Heath in the Massachusetts Convention, that "Congress has declared that the new States shall be republican and have no slavery." No other reason can be given. Thus republicanism in fact, and not in form merely, was made a condition of admitting new States. This is part of the unalterable compact to which validity was given by the Constitution. The Constitution, therefore, while it guarantees a republican form of government, does in fact, by giving validity to the ordinance, guarantee republican governments to the new States. This is another very significant fact harmonizing perfectly with all the other facts in the original plan for extending the Union by admitting States from Territories.
The States are all equals, or not, according to the terms of their admission. The original States became members of the Union upon the single condition of ratifying the Constitution, which left them at liberty to tolerate slavery or not. But the States formed in the only Territory which belonged to the United States at the time the Constitution was framed, were admitted on condition that slavery should be perpetually interdicted within their limits, and as parties to an unalterable compact to that effect.