made to extend to the latter territory the restriction originally
applied to the country situated between the rivers Ohio and Mississippi.

Most questionable as was this proposition in all its constitutional
relations, nevertheless it received the sanction of Congress, with
some slight modifications of line, to save the existing rights of the
intended new State. It was reluctantly acquiesced in by Southern States
as a sacrifice to the cause of peace and of the Union, not only of the
rights stipulated by the treaty of Louisiana, but of the principle
of equality among the States guaranteed by the Constitution. It was
received by the Northern States with angry and resentful condemnation
and complaint, because it did not concede all which they had exactingly
demanded. Having passed through the forms of legislation, it took its
place in the statute book, standing open to repeal, like any other act
of doubtful constitutionality, subject to be pronounced null and void by
the courts of law, and possessing no possible efficacy to control the
rights of the States which might thereafter be organized out of any part
of the original territory of Louisiana.

In all this, if any aggression there were, any innovation upon
preexisting rights, to which portion of the Union are they justly
chargeable?

This controversy passed away with the occasion, nothing surviving it
save the dormant letter of the statute.

But long afterwards, when by the proposed accession of the Republic of
Texas the United States were to take their next step in territorial
greatness, a similar contingency occurred and became the occasion for
systematized attempts to intervene in the domestic affairs of one
section of the Union, in defiance of their rights as States and of the
stipulations of the Constitution. These attempts assumed a practical
direction in the shape of persevering endeavors by some of the
Representatives in both Houses of Congress to deprive the Southern
States of the supposed benefit of the provisions of the act authorizing
the organization of the State of Missouri.

But the good sense of the people and the vital force of the Constitution
triumphed over sectional prejudice and the political errors of the day,
and the State of Texas returned to the Union as she was, with social
institutions which her people had chosen for themselves and with express
agreement by the reannexing act that she should be susceptible of
subdivision into a plurality