States.

When admitted by Congress into the Union, whether by compact or
otherwise, the new State becomes entitled to the enjoyment of the same
rights, and bound to perform the like duties as the other States;
and its citizens will be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States.

The citizens of each State possess rights, and owe duties that are
peculiar to, and arise out of the Constitution and laws of the several
States. These rights and duties differ from each other in the different
States, and among these differences none is so remarkable or important
as that which proceeds from the Constitution and laws of the several
States respecting slavery; the same being permitted in some States and
forbidden in others.

The question respecting slavery in the old thirteen States had been
decided and settled before the adoption of the Constitution, which
grants no power to Congress to interfere with, or to change what had
been so previously settled. The slave States, therefore, are free
to continue or to abolish slavery. Since the year 1808 Congress have
possessed power to prohibit and have prohibited the further migration
or importation of slaves into any of the old thirteen States, and at all
times, under the Constitution, have had power to prohibit such migration
or importation into any of the new States or territories of the United
States. The Constitution contains no express provision respecting
slavery in a new State that may be admitted into the Union; every
regulation upon this subject belongs to the power whose consent is
necessary to the formation and admission of new States into the Union.
Congress may, therefore, make it a condition of the admission of a new
State, that slavery shall be forever prohibited within the same. We may,
with the more confidence, pronounce this to be the true construction
of the Constitution, as it has been so amply confirmed by the past
decisions of Congress.

Although the articles of confederation were drawn up and approved by
the old Congress, in the year 1777, and soon afterwards were ratified by
some of the States, their complete ratification did not take place until
the year 1781. The States which possessed small and already settled
territory, withheld their ratification, in order to obtain from the
large States a cession to the United States of a portion of their vacant
territory. Without entering into the reasons on which this demand was
urged, i