of his
removal to Rock Island, in the State of Illinois, as stated in the
above admissions?

We proceed to examine the first question.

The act of Congress, upon which the plaintiff relies, declares that
slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime,
shall be forever prohibited in all that part of the territory ceded by
France, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six
degrees thirty minutes north latitude, and not included within the
limits of Missouri. And the difficulty which meets us at the threshold
of this part of the inquiry is, whether Congress was authorized to
pass this law under any of the powers granted to it by the
Constitution; for if the authority is not given by that instrument, it
is the duty of this court to declare it void and inoperative, and
incapable of conferring freedom upon any one who is held as a slave
under the laws of any one of the States.

The counsel for the plaintiff has laid much stress upon that article
in the Constitution which confers on Congress the power "to dispose of
and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or
other property belonging to the United States;" but, in the judgment
of the court, that provision has no bearing on the present
controversy, and the power there given, whatever it may be, is
confined, and was intended to be confined, to the territory which at
that time belonged to, or was claimed by, the United States, and was
within their boundaries as settled by the treaty with Great Britain,
and can have no influence upon a territory afterwards acquired from a
foreign Government. It was a special provision for a known and
particular territory, and to meet a present emergency, and nothing
more.

A brief summary of the history of the times, as well as the careful
and measured terms in which the article is framed, will show the
correctness of this proposition.

It will be remembered that, from the commencement of the Revolutionary
war, serious difficulties existed between the States, in relation to
the disposition of large and unsettled territories which were included
in the chartered limits of some of the States. And some of the other
States, and more especially Maryland, which had no unsettled lands,
insisted that as the unoccupied lands, if wrested from Great Britain,
would owe their reservation to the common purse and the common sword,
the money arising from them ought to be applied in just propor