*

In a word, the whole amount of the argument on the other side is, that
you may refuse to admit a new State, and that therefore if you admit,
you may prescribe the terms.

The answer to that argument is--that even if you can refuse, you can
prescribe no terms which are inconsistent with the act you are to do.
You can prescribe no conditions which, if carried into effect, would
make the new State less a sovereign State than, under the Union as it
stands, it would be. You can prescribe no terms which will make
the compact of Union between it and the original States essentially
different from that compact among the original States. You may admit, or
refuse to admit: but if you admit, you must admit a State in the sense
of the Constitution--a State with all such sovereignty as belongs to the
original parties: and it must be into this Union that you are to admit
it, not into a Union of your own dictating, formed out of the existing
Union by qualifications and new compacts, altering its character and
effect, and making it fall short of its protecting energy in reference
to the new State, whilst it acquires an energy of another sort--the
energy of restraint and destruction.

* * * * *

One of the most signal errors with which the argument on the other side
has abounded, is this of considering the proposed restriction as if
levelled at the introduction or establishment of slavery. And hence the
vehement declamation, which, among other things, has informed us that
slavery originated in fraud or violence.

The truth is, that the restriction has no relation, real or pretended,
to the right of making slaves of those who are free, or of introducing
slavery where it does not already exist. It applies to those who are
admitted to be already slaves, and who (with their posterity) would
continue to be slaves if they should remain where they are at present;
and to a place where slavery already exists by the local law. Their
civil condition will not be altered by their removal from Virginia, or
Carolina, to Missouri. They will not be more slaves than they now are.
Their abode, indeed, will be different, but their bondage the same.
Their numbers may possibly be augmented by the diffusion, and I think
they will. But this can only happen because their hardships will be
mitigated, and their comforts increased. The checks to population,
which exist in the older States, will be diminished. The restriction,
therefor