of expediency. No one who has sworn to support the Constitution can
conscientiously vote for what he understands to be an unconstitutional
measure, however expedient he may think it; but one may and ought to vote
against a measure which he deems constitutional, if, at the same time, he
deems it inexpedient. It therefore would be unsafe to set down even the
two who voted against the prohibition as having done so because, in their
understanding, any proper division of local from Federal authority, or
anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as
to slavery in Federal territory.

The remaining sixteen of the "thirty-nine," so far as I have discovered,
have left no record of their understanding upon the direct question of
Federal control on slavery in the Federal Territories. But there is much
reason to believe that their understanding upon that question would not
have appeared different from that of their twenty-three compeers, had it
been manifested at all.

For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have purposely omitted
whatever understanding may have been manifested by any person, however
distinguished, other than the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original
Constitution; and, for the same reason, I have also omitted whatever
understanding may have been manifested by any of the "thirty tine" even on
any other phase of the general question of slavery. If we should look into
their acts and declarations on those other phases, as the foreign slave
trade, and the morality and policy of slavery generally, it would appear
to us that on the direct question of Federal control of slavery in Federal
Territories, the sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably have
acted just as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several of
the most noted anti-slavery men of those times--as Dr. Franklin, Alexander
Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris while there was not one now known to have
been otherwise, unless it may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina.

The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed
the original Constitution, twenty-one--a clear majority of the
whole--certainly understood that no proper division of local from
Federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal
Government to control slavery in the Federal Territories; whilst all the
rest probably had the same understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the
understanding of our fathers