se amendments were framed by the first Congress
which sat under the Constitution--the identical Congress which passed
the act already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the
Northwestern Territory. Not only was it the same Congress, but they were
the identical same individual men who, at the same session, and at the
same time within the session, had under consideration, and in progress
toward maturity, these Constitutional amendments, and this act prohibiting
slavery in all the territory the nation then owned. The Constitutional
amendments were introduced before and passed after the act enforcing the
Ordinance of '87; so that, during the whole pendency of the act to enforce
the Ordinance, the Constitutional amendments were also pending.

The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen of the framers
of the original Constitution, as before stated, were pre-eminently our
fathers who framed that part of "the Government under which we live,"
which is now claimed as forbidding the Federal Government to control
slavery in the Federal Territories.

Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm that
the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, and carried to
maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other?
And does not such affirmation become impudently absurd when coupled with
the other affirmation from the same mouth, that those who did the two
things alleged to be inconsistent understood whether they really were
inconsistent better than we--better than he who affirms that they are
inconsistent?

It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the original
Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the
amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly include those who may be
fairly called "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live."
And, so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his
whole life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper division of
local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the
Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. I
go a step further. I defy any one to show that any living man in the
world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century (and I
might almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present
century), declare that, in his understanding, any proper divisi