gating a portion of
their powers to be exercised by the Federal Government for the
increased security of each against dangers, _domestic_ as well
as foreign; and that any intermeddling by any one or more
States, or by a combination of their citizens, with the domestic
institutions of the others, on any pretext whatever, political,
moral, or religious, with the view to their disturbance or
subversion, is in violation of the Constitution, insulting to
the States so interfered with, endangers their domestic peace
and tranquillity--objects for which the Constitution was
formed--and, by necessary consequence, tends to weaken and
destroy the Union itself.

"2. _Resolved_, That negro slavery, as it exists in fifteen
States of this Union, composes an important portion of their
domestic institutions, inherited from our ancestors, and
existing at the adoption of the Constitution, by which it is
recognized as constituting an important element in the
apportionment of powers among the States, and that no change of
opinion or feeling on the part of the non-slaveholding States of
the Union in relation to this institution can justify them or
their citizens in open or covert attacks thereon, with a view to
its overthrow; and that all such attacks are in manifest
violation of the mutual and solemn pledge to protect and defend
each other, given by the States respectively, on entering into
the constitutional compact which formed the Union, and are a
manifest breach of faith and a violation of the most solemn
obligations.

"3. _Resolved_, That the Union of these States rests on the
equality of rights and privileges among its members, and that it
is especially the duty of the Senate, which represents the
States in their sovereign capacity, to resist all attempts to
discriminate either in relation to persons or property in the
Territories, which are the common possessions of the United
States, so as to give advantages to the citizens of one State
which are not equally assured to those of every other State.

"4. _Resolved_, That neither Congress nor a Territorial
Legislature, whether by direct legislation or legislation of an
indirect and unfriendly character, possesses power to annul or
impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United
States to take his slave property into