dmitted, 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