expedient contained in the
eighth section of this act was proposed, to moderate it, and to avert
the catastrophe it menaced. It was not seriously debated, nor were its
constitutional aspects severely scrutinized by Congress. For the first
time, in the history of the country, has its operation been embodied
in a case at law, and been presented to this court for their judgment.
The inquiry is, whether there are conditions in the Constitutions of
the Territories which subject the capacity and _status_ of persons
within their limits to the direct action of Congress. Can Congress
determine the condition and _status_ of persons who inhabit the
Territories?

[Footnote 4: Mr. Jefferson wrote: "The Missouri question is the most
portentous one that ever threatened our Union. In the gloomiest
moments of the revolutionary war, I never had any apprehension equal
to that I feel from this source."]

The Constitution permits Congress to dispose of and to make all
needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other
property belonging to the United States. This power applies as well to
territory belonging to the United States within the States, as beyond
them. It comprehends all the public domain, wherever it may be. The
argument is, that the power to make "ALL needful rules and
regulations" "is a power of legislation," "a full legislative power;"
"that it includes all subjects of legislation in the territory," and
is without any limitations, except the positive prohibitions which
affect all the powers of Congress. Congress may then regulate or
prohibit slavery upon the public domain within the new States, and
such a prohibition would permanently affect the capacity of a slave,
whose master might carry him to it. And why not? Because no power has
been conferred on Congress. This is a conclusion universally admitted.
But the power to "make rules and regulations respecting the territory"
is not restrained by State lines, nor are there any constitutional
prohibitions upon its exercise in the domain of the United States
within the States; and whatever rules and regulations respecting
territory Congress may constitutionally make are supreme, and are not
dependent on the _situs_ of "the territory."

The author of the Farmer's Letters, so famous in the
ante-revolutionary history, thus states the argument made by the
American loyalists in favor of the claim of the British Parliament to
legislate in all cases whatever over the co