institution; for it cannot, of course, be pretended that
the United States constitution recognized, as constitutional, any state
institution that did not constitutionally exist.

Even if the constitution of the United States had _intended_ to
recognize slavery, as a constitutional _state_ institution, such
intended recognition would have failed of effect, and been legally void,
because slavery then had no constitutional existence to be recognized.

Suppose, for an illustration of this principle, that the constitution of
the United States had, by implication, plainly taken it for granted that
the state legislatures had power--derived from the _state_
constitutions--to order arbitrarily that infant children, or that men
without the charge of crime, should be maimed--deprived, for instance,
of a hand, a foot, or an eye. This intended recognition, on the part of
the constitution of the United States, of the legality of such a
practice, would obviously have failed of all legal effect--would have
been mere surplussage--if it should appear, from an examination of the
state constitutions themselves, that they had really conferred no such
power upon the legislatures. And this principle applies with the same
force to laws that would arbitrarily make men or children slaves, as to
laws that should arbitrarily order them to be maimed or murdered.

We might here safely rest the whole question--for no one, as has already
been said, pretends that the constitution of the United States, by its
own authority, created or authorized slavery as a new institution; but
only that it intended to recognize it as one already established by
authority of the state constitutions. This intended recognition--if
there were any such--being founded on an error as to what the state
constitutions really did authorize, necessarily falls to the ground, a
defunct intention.

We make a stand, then, at this point, and insist that the main
question--the only material question--is already decided against
slavery; and that it is of no consequence what recognition or sanction
the constitution of the United States may have intended to extend to it.

The constitution of the United States, at its adoption, certainly took
effect upon, and made citizens of _all_ "the people of the United
States," who were _not slaves_ under the state constitutions. No one can
deny a proposition so self-evident as that. If, then, the _State_
constitutions, then existing, authorized n