ry have no
constitutional power to legalize slavery within their limits; that
they were admitted into the Union without any such power, and that
every other new State formed from territory outside the limits of the
original States, according to the "spirit of the compact of our
fathers," should have been admitted without that power, or the right
to acquire it. This I will now proceed to show.

On the first day of March, 1784, the northwest territory, constituting
the present States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
Wisconsin, was ceded by Virginia to the United States. The
jurisdiction of the United States was then exclusive and paramount, or
soon became so--such other States as had claimed any right of
jurisdiction having ceded it. The cession of Virginia was made by
THOMAS JEFFERSON, SAMUEL HARDY, ARTHUR LEE, and JAMES MONROE, who were
delegates in Congress from that State, and had been appointed
Commissioners for this purpose. On the same day the cession was made,
Mr. JEFFERSON, in behalf of a committee, reported a plan for temporary
governments in the United States territory then and afterwards to be
ceded, and for forming therein permanent governments.

That plan provided, "that so much of the territory ceded, or to be
ceded, by individual States to the United States, shall be divided
into distinct States." It is obvious that this plan contemplated the
possession of territory in no other way than by cession from the
States. It was expected that Georgia and North Carolina would cede
their western lands, now the States of Alabama, Mississippi, and
Tennessee, as they did some years later; and Mr. JEFFERSON'S plan was
intended to embrace those lands or territories to be ceded.
Consequently, the following provisions, which were part of the plan
reported, were intended by him to apply to Alabama, Mississippi, and
Tennessee, viz.:

"After the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be
neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said
States, otherwise that in the punishment of crimes."

Here the States were evidently those to be formed in United States
territory. And farther on in the plan it is stated,

"That the preceding articles shall be formed into a charter
of compact, and shall stand as fundamental Constitutions
between the thirteen original States, and each of the
several States now newly described, unalterable ... but by
the joint consent of the Unite