avery therein?

While the regulation is one "respecting the territory," while it is,
in the judgment of Congress, "a needful regulation," and is thus
completely within the words of the grant, while no other clause of the
Constitution can be shown, which requires the insertion of an
exception respecting slavery, and while the practical construction for
a period of upwards of fifty years forbids such an exception, it
would, in my opinion, violate every sound rule of interpretation to
force that exception into the Constitution upon the strength of
abstract political reasoning, which we are bound to believe the people
of the United States thought insufficient to induce them to limit the
power of Congress, because what they have said contains no such
limitation.

Before I proceed further to notice some other grounds of supposed
objection to this power of Congress, I desire to say, that if it were
not for my anxiety to insist upon what I deem a correct exposition of
the Constitution, if I looked only to the purposes of the argument,
the source of the power of Congress asserted in the opinion of the
majority of the court would answer those purposes equally well. For
they admit that Congress has power to organize and govern the
Territories until they arrive at a suitable condition for admission to
the Union; they admit, also, that the kind of Government which shall
thus exist should be regulated by the condition and wants of each
Territory, and that it is necessarily committed to the discretion of
Congress to enact such laws for that purpose as that discretion may
dictate; and no limit to that discretion has been shown, or even
suggested, save those positive prohibitions to legislate, which are
found in the Constitution.

I confess myself unable to perceive any difference whatever between my
own opinion of the general extent of the power of Congress and the
opinion of the majority of the court, save that I consider it
derivable from the express language of the Constitution, while they
hold it to be silently implied from the power to acquire territory.
Looking at the power of Congress over the Territories as of the extent
just described, what positive prohibition exists in the Constitution,
which restrained Congress from enacting a law in 1820 to prohibit
slavery north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude?

The only one suggested is that clause in the fifth article of the
amendments of the Constitution which