enfeeble the South, and deprive them of their
just participation in the benefits and privileges of this government. He
says, very properly, that it was enacted under the old Confederation,
and before this Constitution went into effect; but my present purpose is
only to say, Mr. President, that it was established with the entire and
unanimous concurrence of the whole South. Why, there it stands! The vote
of every State in the Union was unanimous in favor of the Ordinance,
with the exception of a single individual vote, and that individual vote
was given by a Northern man. This Ordinance prohibiting slavery for ever
northwest of the Ohio has the hand and seal of every Southern member in
Congress. It was therefore no aggression of the North on the South. The
other and third clear historical truth is, that the Convention meant to
leave slavery in the States as they found it, entirely under the
authority and control of the States themselves.

This was the state of things, Sir, and this the state of opinion, under
which those very important matters were arranged, and those three
important things done; that is, the establishment of the Constitution of
the United States with a recognition of slavery as it existed in the
States; the establishment of the ordinance for the government of the
Northwestern Territory, prohibiting, to the full extent of all territory
owned by the United States, the introduction of slavery into that
territory, while leaving to the States all power over slavery in their
own limits; and creating a power, in the new government, to put an end
to the importation of slaves, after a limited period. There was entire
coincidence and concurrence of sentiment between the North and the
South, upon all these questions, at the period of the adoption of the
Constitution. But opinions, Sir, have changed, greatly changed; changed
North and changed South. Slavery is not regarded in the South now as it
was then. I see an honorable member of this body paying me the honor of
listening to my remarks;[3] he brings to my mind, Sir, freshly and
vividly, what I have learned of his great ancestor, so much
distinguished in his day and generation, so worthy to be succeeded by so
worthy a grandson, and of the sentiments he expressed in the Convention
in Philadelphia.[4]

Here we may pause. There was, if not an entire unanimity, a general
concurrence of sentiment running through the whole community, and
especially entertained by th