such
territory, are now in the Union. Every branch of this Government,
during a period of more than fifty years, has participated in these
transactions. To question their validity now, is vain. As was said by
Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, in the American Insurance Company _v._
Canter, (1 Peters, 542,) "the Constitution confers absolutely on the
Government of the Union the powers of making war and of making
treaties; consequently, that Government possesses the power of
acquiring territory, either by conquest or treaty." (See Cerre _v._
Pitot, 6 Cr., 336.) And I add, it also possesses the power of
governing it, when acquired, not by resorting to supposititious
powers, nowhere found described in the Constitution, but expressly
granted in the authority to make all needful rules and regulations
respecting the territory of the United States.

There was to be established by the Constitution a frame of government,
under which the people of the United States and their posterity were
to continue indefinitely. To take one of its provisions, the language
of which is broad enough to extend throughout the existence of the
Government, and embrace all territory belonging to the United States
throughout all time, and the purposes and objects of which apply to
all territory of the United States, and narrow it down to territory
belonging to the United States when the Constitution was framed, while
at the same time it is admitted that the Constitution contemplated and
authorized the acquisition, from time to time, of other and foreign
territory, seems to me to be an interpretation as inconsistent with
the nature and purposes of the instrument, as it is with its language,
and I can have no hesitation in rejecting it.

I construe this clause, therefore, as if it had read, Congress shall
have power to make all needful rules and regulations respecting those
tracts of country, out of the limits of the several States, which the
United States have acquired, or may hereafter acquire, by cessions, as
well of the jurisdiction as of the soil, so far as the soil may be
the property of the party making the cession, at the time of making
it.

It has been urged that the words "rules and regulations" are not
appropriate terms in which to convey authority to make laws for the
government of the territory.

But it must be remembered that this is a grant of power to the
Congress--that it is therefore necessarily a grant of power to
legislate--and, certain