y did not mean to have any new slave States. Otherwise
they certainly did mean to make this distinction, for nothing can be
clearer than that Louisiana and Missouri cannot go to Ohio to recover
fugitive slaves within the meaning of this "compact of the fathers;"
while Georgia can. Manifestly we have departed from the system devised
by the fathers in allowing Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and
Florida to be admitted with slavery, which explains, and nothing else
can, this anomalous condition of things.

There can be no escape from these conclusions, but to deny that the
ordinance has ever had any validity under the Constitution; which
would be scarcely less than to deny that the Constitution itself had
ever been a valid instrument. Having the like unequivocal sanction of
national authority, and expressing alike in the words of Mr. Toombs,
"the collective will of the whole," they must stand or fall together.

Originally the territory was not divided by the line of 36 deg. 30', or by
any other line giving part to freedom and part to slavery. It was all
secured, and by consent of the South, to freedom. There is nothing,
therefore, in the original compromise, to justify the remark of the
Editor of the Boston _Courier_ in a recent number of that paper, that
"below the line of 36 deg. 30', the South have the right of prescription."
Freedom has an older prescriptive right to all the Territories. The
line established by the compromise, between slavery permitted and
slavery prohibited, was the boundary line between the then existing
States and the Territory of the United States; or the line between
exclusive national jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of the States. It
is an erroneous assumption, therefore, that the free States, by the
introduction of slavery south of 36 deg. 30', as well as north of it,
would receive more than a fair share or moiety of rights and
privileges, as between States or parties entitled to equal privileges.
The idea that the extension of slavery under the Federal Government
can be claimed by anybody south or north as a right, is wholly
inadmissible. The _Courier_ will hold the following declarations from
Mr. WEBSTER to be good authority, if others do not:

"Wherever there is a foot of land to be staid back from
becoming slave territory, I am ready to assert the principle
of excluding slavery." "We are to use the first and last,
and every occasion which offers, to oppose the e