seen on the application of Missouri for admission, that the ordinance
of 1787 should have been applied to it at the time of the purchase. If
it had been, Louisiana, Missouri, and Arkansas would never have become
slave States (the few slaves in New Orleans and vicinity being
emancipated, as they should have been, upon some equitable principle),
and the Missouri Compromise, which was the second departure from the
original policy, would never have been made. The third was the
annexation of Texas as a slave State, and the argument to divide it
into three or four more. Annexation led to the war with Mexico, and
the acquisition of a large part of her territory, and to the
compromise of 1850, by which it was Congressionally agreed that the
States formed in that territory might be admitted with slavery, if
their Constitutions should so prescribe. This was the fourth departure
from the original policy of prohibition. The fifth was the repeal of
the Missouri Compromise in 1850, and the attempts to subjugate and
enslave Kansas. That repeal made the change from the original policy
radical and total. Certainly it is high time "to restore the Union and
Constitution in the spirit in which they were established by the
fathers."

And now, sir, I propose to begin the work of "restoring the policy of
1787," by applying the ordinance of 1787 to every foot of organized
and unorganized territory, wherever situated, which now belongs to the
United States, precisely as the fathers applied it to every foot of
such territory at the time the Constitution was made; and I ask, in
all earnestness and seriousness, what any member of the Convention can
have to say against this, who sincerely desires to "restore the Union
and Constitution in the spirit in which they were established by the
fathers of the Republic," and is "ready to adjust the present unhappy
controversy" in the same spirit? What, I beg to know, can be said
against this mode of adjustment by those who are in favor of a
"restoration of the Constitution to the principles and landmarks of
our fathers," and of a "return to the policy of 1787"? Can any man
doubt that that ordinance would have been extended over all these
territories in 1787, if they had belonged to the United States at that
time? Let slavery, then, be prohibited now precisely as the fathers
prohibited it then. Copy that old ordinance word for word, and give it
legal force and effect, and make it the basis of all laws, and a