very prohibition or indefinite slavery
extension. Having never been exercised but by way of compromise it
commits the government to neither extreme and is not a conclusive
precedent for the constitutional power of Congress over the subject.

I shall briefly notice the facts of history bearing on this proposition.

The territory now covered by the States of Tennessee, Alabama, and
Mississippi, was ceded to the United States by North Carolina and
Georgia prior to 1803, and accepted by the United States, on the
condition that Congress should extend over it a government, and
ultimately divide it into States, on the principles of the ordinance of
1787, _except as to slavery_, and territorial governments were
afterwards organized over it as slave territory. While, therefore,
Congress had in 1787 assumed, by a compact of the original States, to
prohibit slavery north-west of the Ohio River, it had also within twelve
years after the adoption of the ordinance of 1787 and the Constitution,
by express contract agreed not to prohibit it in all territory south of
the Ohio, and by the admission of Kentucky and Tennessee as Slave States
prior to 1800, could not prohibit it there.

Up then to the time of the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, the Ohio River
was the compromise line between free and slave territory--_a line of
agreement_, rather than arbitrary legislation.

Louisiana was all slave territory, and by the 3d article of the treaty
for its acquisition, its inhabitants were to come into the Union as soon
as possible on equal terms with other citizens, and in the meantime
their rights of religion, liberty and property were to be maintained and
protected.

In this territory, the boundaries of which were subsequently defined by
treaties with Spain and Great Britain, were included the present States
of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon, and the
territories of Kansas, Nebraska, &c.

Soon after this acquisition, territorial governments were organized over
the southern portion of the territory, without prohibition of slavery.
In 1812, Louisiana was admitted as a Slave State, and Arkansas and
Missouri were subsequently organized as territories without prohibition
of slavery.

In 1819, Florida was acquired by treaty with Spain, with the same
stipulation, as in the treaty in regard to Louisiana, that the
inhabitants were to have the rights and privileges of citizens of the
United States and be admitted into the