brought, so Congress might exclude any or all property.

The case before us will illustrate the construction contended for. Dr.
Emerson was a citizen of Missouri; he had an equal right to go to the
Territory with every citizen of other States. This is undeniable, as I
suppose. Scott was Dr. Emerson's lawful property in Missouri; he
carried his Missouri title with him; and the precise question here is,
whether Congress had the power to annul that title. It is idle to say,
that if Congress could not defeat the title _directly_, that it might
be done indirectly, by drawing a narrow circle around the slave
population of Upper Louisiana, and declaring that if the slave went
beyond it, he should be free. Such assumption is mere evasion, and
entitled to no consideration. And it is equally idle to contend, that
because Congress has express power to regulate commerce among the
Indian tribes, and to prohibit intercourse with the Indians, that
therefore Dr. Emerson's title might be defeated within the country
ceded by the Indians to the United States as early as 1805, and which
embraces Fort Snelling. (Am. State Papers, vol. 1, p. 734.) We _must_
meet the question, whether Congress had the power to declare that a
citizen of a State, carrying with him his equal rights, secured to him
through his State, could be stripped of his goods and slaves, and be
deprived of any participation in the common property? If this be the
true meaning of the Constitution, equality of rights to enjoy a common
country (equal to a thousand miles square) may be cut off by a
geographical line, and a great portion of our citizens excluded from
it.

Ingenious, indirect evasions of the Constitution have been attempted
and defeated heretofore. In the passenger cases, (7 How. R.,) the
attempt was made to impose a tax on the masters, crews, and passengers
of vessels, the Constitution having prohibited a tax on the vessel
itself; but this court held the attempt to be a mere evasion, and
pronounced the tax illegal.

I admit that Virginia could, and lawfully did, prohibit slavery
northwest of the Ohio, by her charter of cession, and that the
territory was taken by the United States with this condition imposed.
I also admit that France could, by the treaty of 1803, have prohibited
slavery in any part of the ceded territory, and imposed it on the
United States as a fundamental condition of the cession, in the mean
time, till new States were admitted in the Union.