me a law during the
Administration of Mr. Pierce. As this occupies a large space in the
political history of the period, it is proper to state some facts
connected with it, which were not public, but were known to me and to
others yet living.

The declaration, often repeated in 1850, that climate and the will of
the people concerned should determine their institutions when they
should form a Constitution, and as a State be admitted into the Union,
and that no legislation by Congress should be permitted to interfere
with the free exercise of that will when so expressed, was but the
announcement of the fact so firmly established in the Constitution, that
sovereignty resided alone in the States, and that Congress had only
delegated powers. It has been sometimes contended that, because the
Congress of the Confederation, by the Ordinance of 1787, prohibited
involuntary servitude in all the Northwestern Territory, the framers of
the Constitution must have recognized such power to exist in the
Congress of the United States. Hence the deduction that the prohibitory
clause of what is known as the Missouri Compromise was justified by the
precedent of the Ordinance of 1787. To make the action of the Congress
of the Confederation a precedent for the Congress of the United States
is to overlook the great distinction between the two.

The Congress of the Confederation represented the States in their
sovereignty, and, as such representatives, had legislative, executive,
and, in some degree, judicial power confided to it. Virtually, it was an
assemblage of the States. In certain cases a majority of nine States
were required to decide a question, but there is no express limitation,
or restriction, such as is to be found in the ninth and tenth amendments
to the Constitution of the United States. The General Government of the
Union is composed of three departments, of which the Congress is the
legislative branch, and which is checked by the revisory power of the
judiciary, and the veto power of the Executive, and, above all, is
expressly limited in legislation to powers expressly delegated by the
States. If, then, it be admitted, which is certainly questionable, that
the Congress of the Confederation had power to exclude slave property
northwest of the Ohio River, that power must have been derived from its
character as representing the States in their sovereignty, for no
indication of such a power is to be found in the Articles of
Confe