tories of the United States, it does not, never did, and never
could, imply the addition of a single slave to the number already
existing. The question was merely whether the slaveholder should be
permitted to go, with his slaves, into territory (the common property of
all) into which the non-slaveholder could go with _his_ property of any
sort. There was no proposal nor desire on the part of the Southern
States to reopen the slave-trade, which they had been foremost in
suppressing, or to add to the number of slaves. It was a question of the
distribution, or dispersion, of the slaves, rather than of the
"extension of slavery." Removal is not extension. Indeed, if
emancipation was the end to be desired, the dispersion of the negroes
over a wider area among additional Territories, eventually to become
States, and in climates unfavorable to slave-labor, instead of
hindering, would have promoted this object by diminishing the
difficulties in the way of ultimate emancipation.

The distinction here defined between the distribution, or dispersion, of
slaves and the extension of slavery--two things altogether different,
although so generally confounded--was early and clearly drawn under
circumstances and in a connection which justify a fuller notice.

Virginia, it is well known, in the year 1784, ceded to the United
States--then united only by the original Articles of Confederation--her
vast possessions northwest of the Ohio, from which the great States of
Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota,
have since been formed. In 1787--before the adoption of the Federal
Constitution--the celebrated "Ordinance" for the government of this
Northwestern Territory was adopted by the Congress, with the full
consent, and indeed at the express instance, of Virginia. This Ordinance
included six definite "Articles of compact between the original States
and the people and States in the said Territory," which were to "for
ever remain unalterable unless by common consent." The sixth of these
articles ordains that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of
crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."

In December, 1805, a petition of the Legislative Council and House of
Representatives of the Indiana Territory--then comprising all the area
now occupied by the States of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
Wisconsin--was presented to Cong