had no power to prohibit slavery in the Territories. The clause
giving Congress power to make regulations for the Territories did not
confer general jurisdiction. It was not proper nor just to prohibit
slavery in the Territories. Penning the negro up in the old States would
only make him wretched and miserable, and would not strike a single
fetter from his limbs. Mr. Toombs simply asked that the common territory
be left open to the common enjoyment of all the people of the United
States; that they should be protected in their persons and property by
the general government, until its authority be superseded by a State
constitution, when the character of their democratic institutions was to
be determined by the freemen thereof. "This," he said, "is justice. This
is constitutional equity." Mr. Toombs contended that the compromise
measures of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 were made to
conform to this policy. "I trust--I believe," he continued, "that when
the transient passions of the day shall have subsided, and reason shall
have resumed her dominion, it will be approved, even applauded, by the
collective body of the people."

Upon the second branch of his theme, Mr. Toombs contended that so long
as the African and Caucasian races co-exist in the same society, the
subordination of the African is the normal and proper condition, the one
which promotes the highest interests and greatest happiness of both
races. The superiority of the white man over the black, he argued, was
not transient or artificial. The Crown had introduced slavery among the
American colonists. The question was not whether it was just to tear the
African away from bondage in his own country and place him here.
England had settled that for us. When the colonies became free they
found seven hundred thousand slaves among them. Our fathers had to
accept the conditions and frame governments to cover it. They
incorporated no Utopian theories in their system. They did not so much
concern themselves about what rights man might possibly have in a state
of nature, as what rights he ought to have in a state of society. The
lecturer maintained that under this system, the African in the
slaveholding States is found in a better position than he has ever
attained in any other age or country, whether in bondage or freedom. The
great body of this race had been slaves in foreign lands and slaves in
their native land. In the Eastern Hemisphere the African had alwa