_territory_ and _other property belonging_ to the United States."

In the discussions in both houses of Congress, at the time of adopting
this eighth section of the act of 1820, great weight was given to the
peculiar language of this clause, viz: _territory_ and _other property
belonging_ to the United States, as going to show that the power of
disposing of and regulating, thereby vested in Congress, was
restricted to a _proprietary interest in the territory or land_
comprised therein, and did not extend to the personal or political
rights of citizens or settlers, inasmuch as this phrase in the
Constitution, "_territory or other property_," identified _territory_
with _property_, and inasmuch as _citizens_ or _persons_ could not be
property, and especially were not property _belonging_ to the United
States. And upon every principle of reason or necessity, this power to
dispose of and to regulate the _territory_ of the nation could be
designed to extend no farther than to its preservation and
appropriation to the uses of those to whom it belonged, viz: the
nation. Scarcely anything more illogical or extravagant can be
imagined than the attempt to deduce from this provision in the
Constitution a power to destroy or in any wise to impair the civil and
political rights of the citizens of the United States, and much more
so the power to establish inequalities amongst those citizens by
creating privileges in one class of those citizens, and by the
disfranchisement of other portions or classes, by degrading them from
the position they previously occupied.

There can exist no rational or natural connection or affinity between
a pretension like this and the power vested by the Constitution in
Congress with regard to the Territories; on the contrary, there is an
absolute incongruity between them.

But whatever the power vested in Congress, and whatever the precise
subject to which that power extended, it is clear that the power
related to a subject appertaining to the _United States_, and one to
be disposed of and regulated for the benefit and under the authority
of the _United States_. Congress was made simply the agent or
_trustee_ for the United States, and could not, without a breach of
trust and a fraud, appropriate the subject of the trust to any other
beneficiary or _cestui que trust_ than the United States, or to the
people of the United States, upon equal grounds, legal or equitable.
Congress could not appropriate tha