ment and extension
by the Federal government, and therefore slavery shall be protected and
extended in all the States and territories of the American Union. Had
the constitutional convention been a sectional and not a national
organization; had its members been governed by a sectional and not a
national spirit, they would doubtless have taken one or the other of the
horns of this dilemma, but in that "_spirit of amity, mutual deference
and concession_," which governed their lofty patriotism, they took
neither of the extremes. They took the position that the institution of
domestic slavery was of local origin and of local concern--a matter
directly pertaining to the internal sovereignty of each State; that it
was not a legitimate subject for national or Federal legislation, and so
far as related to its extension or its abolition within the States, they
left it where they found it, with the people of the States whom it most
concerned, the Congress assuming only the right, after the period of
twenty years, to prohibit the importations of slaves from beyond the
limits of the United States. The political reason of this prohibition is
apparent. Without it the principle of non-intervention with slavery by
the Federal government which pervades the Constitution, could not have
been carried out. So long as the foreign traffic in slaves was made
lawful to any of the States, slavery was nationalized. American slave
ships, engaged in a lawful commerce, and bearing the national flag,
would be as much entitled to national protection as any other of the
American mercantile marine. Permission of the African slave trade was
essentially intervention in favor of slavery, and the right to prohibit
it, and the exercise of that right, in no wise conflict with the
principle of non-interference with it within the States.

There are but four provisions of the Constitution wherein the subject of
slavery is alluded to, viz: Art. 1, sec. 2; art. 1, sec. 9; art. 4, sec.
2; and art. 5.

It is plain from these provisions--

1st--That the slaveholding States are entitled under the Constitution to
representation in the national legislature upon three-fifths of their
slaves, so long as slavery exists in those States; and they are subject
to direct taxation accordingly.

2d--That the right under State laws to import slaves into _the then
existing_ States, was guaranteed for twenty years, or until 1808, and
the guarded concession of the right involved