ns of the United States: therefore,

_Resolved_, by this Convention, that the following articles
are hereby approved and submitted to the Congress of the
United States, with the request that they may, by the
requisite constitutional majority of two-thirds, be
recommended to the respective States of the Union, to be,
when ratified by conventions of three-fourths of the States,
valid and operative as amendments of the Constitution of the
Union.

ARTICLE 1. In all the territory of the United States now
held or hereafter acquired, situate north of latitude 36 deg.
30', slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime, is prohibited, while such territory
shall remain under territorial government. In all the
territory now or hereafter acquired south of said line of
latitude, slavery of the African race is hereby recognized
as existing, and shall not be interfered with by Congress;
but shall be protected as property by all the departments of
the territorial government during its continuance; and when
any territory, north or south of said line, within such
boundaries as Congress may prescribe, shall contain the
population requisite for a member of Congress, according to
the then federal ratio of representation of the people of
the United States, it shall, if its form of government be
republican, be admitted into the Union on an equal footing
with the original States, with or without slavery, as the
constitution of such new State may provide.

ARTICLE 2. Congress shall have no power to abolish slavery
in places under its exclusive jurisdiction, and situate
within the limits of States that permit the holding of
slaves.

ARTICLE 3. Congress shall have no power to abolish slavery
within the District of Columbia, so long as it exists in
the adjoining States of Virginia and Maryland, or either,
nor without the consent of the free white inhabitants, nor
without just compensation first made to such owners of
slaves as do not consent to such abolishment. Nor shall
Congress at any time prohibit officers of the Federal
Government or members of Congress, whose duties require them
to be in said District, from bringing with them their slaves
and holding them, as such, during the time their duties may
require them t