tion had none of the attributes of sovereignty in
legislative, executive, or judicial power. It was little more than a
congress of ambassadors, authorized to represent separate nations, in
matters in which they had a common concern.

It was this congress that accepted the cession from Virginia. They had
no power to accept it under the Articles of Confederation. But they had
an undoubted right, as independent sovereignties, to accept any cession
of territory for their common benefit, which all of them assented to;
and it is equally clear, that as their common property, and having no
superior to control them, they had the right to exercise absolute
dominion over it, subject only to the restrictions which Virginia had
imposed in her act of cession. There was, at we have said, no Government
of the United States then in existence with special enumerated and
limited powers. The territory belonged to sovereignties, who, subject to
the limitations above mentioned, had a right to establish any form of
Government they pleased, by compact or treaty among themselves, and to
regulate rights of person and rights of property in the territory, as
they might deem proper. It was by a Congress, representing the authority
of these several and separate sovereignties, and acting under their
authority and command (but not from any authority derived from the
Articles of Confederation,) that the instrument usually called the
ordinance of 1787 was adopted; regulating in much detail the principles
and the laws by which this territory should be governed; and among other
provisions, slavery is prohibited in it. We do not question the power of
the States, by agreement among themselves, to pass this ordinance, nor
its obligatory force in the territory, while the confederation or league
of the States in their separate sovereign character continued to exist.

This was the state of things when the Constitution of the United States
was formed. The territory ceded by Virginia, belonged to the several
confederated States as common property, and they had united in
establishing in it a system of government and jurisprudence, in order to
prepare it for admission as States, according to the terms of cession.
They were about to dissolve this federative Union, and to surrender a
portion of their independent sovereignty to a new Government, which, for
certain purposes, would make the people of the several States one
people, and which was to be supreme and control