bill, plaint, or information."

We give both of these laws in the words used by the respective
legislative bodies, because the language in which they are framed, as
well as the provisions contained in them, show, too plainly to be
misunderstood, the degraded condition of this unhappy race. They were
still in force when the Revolution began, and are a faithful index to
the state of feeling towards the class of persons of whom they speak,
and of the position they occupied throughout the thirteen colonies, in
the eyes and thoughts of the men who framed the Declaration of
Independence and established the State Constitutions and Governments.
They show that a perpetual and impassable barrier was intended to be
erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to
slavery, and governed as subjects with absolute and despotic power,
and which they then looked upon as so far below them in the scale of
created beings, that intermarriages between white persons and negroes
or mulattoes were regarded as unnatural and immoral, and punished as
crimes, not only in the parties, but in the person who joined them in
marriage. And no distinction in this respect was made between the free
negro or mulatto and the slave, but this stigma, of the deepest
degradation, was fixed upon the whole race.

We refer to these historical facts for the purpose of showing the
fixed opinions concerning that race, upon which the statesmen of that
day spoke and acted. It is necessary to do this, in order to determine
whether the general terms used in the Constitution of the United
States, as to the rights of man and the rights of the people, was
intended to include them, or to give to them or their posterity the
benefit of any of its provisions.

The language of the Declaration of Independence is equally conclusive:

It begins by declaring that, "when in the course of human events it
becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which
have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of
the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature
and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them
to the separation."

It then proceeds to say: "We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights; that among them is life, libe