by persons who are, in
whole or in part, of the African race.

SEC. 2. The United States shall have power to acquire, from
time to time, districts of country in Africa and South
America, for the colonization, at expense of the Federal
Treasury, of such free negroes and mulattoes as the several
States may wish to have removed from their limits and from
the District of Columbia, and such other places as may be
under the jurisdiction of Congress.

_And whereas_, also, besides those causes of dissension
embraced in the foregoing amendments proposed to the
Constitution of the United States, there are others which
come within the jurisdiction of Congress, and may be
remedied by its legitimate power; and whereas it is the
desire of this Convention, as far as its influence may
extend, to remove all just cause for the popular discontent
and agitation which now disturb the peace of the country,
and threaten the stability of its institutions: Therefore,

1. _Resolved_, That the laws now in force for the recovery
of fugitive slaves are in strict pursuance of the plain and
mandatory provisions of the Constitution, and have been
sanctioned as valid and constitutional by the judgment of
the Supreme Court of the United States; that the
slaveholding States are entitled to the faithful observance
and execution of those laws, and that they ought not to be
repealed or so modified or changed as to impair their
efficiency; and that laws ought to be made for the
punishment of those who attempt, by rescue of the slave or
other illegal means, to hinder of defeat the due execution
of said laws.

2. That all State laws which conflict with the fugitive
slave acts, or any other constitutional acts of Congress, or
which in their operation impede, hinder, or delay the free
course and due execution of any of said acts, are null and
void by the plain provisions of the Constitution of the
United States. Yet those State laws, void as they are, have
given color to practices, and led to consequences which have
obstructed the due administration and execution of acts of
Congress, and especially the acts for the delivery of
fugitive slaves, and have thereby contributed much to the
discord and commotion now prevailing. This Convention,
therefore, in