we are obliged to go out of the constitution, to find
the persons on whom the government rests, and those persons are
arbitrarily prescribed by some other instrument, independent of the
constitution, this contradiction would follow, viz., that the United
States government would be a subordinate government--a mere appendage to
something else--a tail to some other kite--or rather a tail to a large
number of kites at once--instead of being, as it declares itself to be,
the supreme government--its constitution and laws being the supreme law
of the land.

Again. It certainly cannot be admitted that we must go out of the United
States constitution to find the classes whom it describes as "the free,"
and "all other persons" than "the free," until it be shown that the
constitution has told us where to go to find them. _In all other cases_,
(without an exception, I think,) where the constitution makes any of its
provisions dependent upon the state constitutions, or state
legislatures, it has particularly described them as depending upon them.
But it gives no intimation that it has left it with the state
constitutions, or the state legislatures, to prescribe whom it means by
the terms "free persons" and "all other persons," on whom it requires
its own representation to be based. We have, therefore, no more
authority from the constitution of the United States, for going to the
state constitutions, to find the classes described in the former as the
"free persons" and "all other persons," than we have for going to Turkey
or Japan. We are compelled, therefore, to find them in the constitution
of the United States itself, if any answering to the description can
possibly be found there.

Again. If we were permitted to go to the state constitutions, or to the
state statute books, to find who were the persons intended by the
constitution of the United States; and if, as the slave argument
assumes, it was left to the states respectively to prescribe who should,
and who should not, be "free" within the meaning of the constitution of
the United States, it would follow that the terms "free" and "all other
persons," might be applied in as many different ways, and to as many
different classes of persons, as there were different states in the
union. Not only so, but the application might also be varied at pleasure
in the same state. One inevitable consequence of this state of things
would be, that there could be neither a permanent, nor a unif