eneral
government, there is no doubt.

The Constitution of the United States recognizes it as an existing fact,
an existing relation between the inhabitants of the Southern States. I
do not call it an "institution," because that term is not applicable to
it; for that seems to imply a voluntary establishment. When I first came
here, it was a matter of frequent reproach to England, the mother
country, that slavery had been entailed upon the colonies by her,
against their consent, and that which is now considered a cherished
"institution" was then regarded as, I will not say an _evil_, but an
entailment on the Colonies by the policy of the mother country against
their wishes. At any rate, it stands upon the Constitution. The
Constitution was adopted in 1788, and went into operation in 1789. When
it was adopted, the state of the country was this: slavery existed in
the Southern States; there was a very large extent of unoccupied
territory, the whole Northwestern Territory, which, it was understood,
was destined to be formed into States; and it was then determined that
no slavery should exist in this territory. I gather now, as a matter of
inference from the history of the time and the history of the debates,
that the prevailing motives with the North for agreeing to this
recognition of the existence of slavery in the Southern States, and
giving a representation to those States founded in part upon their
slaves, rested on the supposition that no acquisition of territory would
be made to form new States on the southern frontier of this country,
either by cession or conquest. No one looked to any acquisition of new
territory on the southern or southwestern frontier. The exclusion of
slavery from the Northwestern Territory and the prospective abolition of
the foreign slave trade were generally, the former unanimously, agreed
to; and on the basis of these considerations, the South insisted that
where slavery existed it should not be interfered with, and that it
should have a certain ratio of representation in Congress. And now, Sir,
I am one, who, believing such to be the understanding on which the
Constitution was framed, mean to abide by it.

There is another principle, equally clear, by which I mean to abide; and
that is, that in the Convention, and in the first Congress, when
appealed to on the subject by petitions, and all along in the history of
this government, it was and has been a conceded point, that slavery in
the S