as to
the Territories by the highest authority, in the light of long previous
practice, is to be found in another part of the instrument itself,
deliberately added three quarters of a century later. Article XIII
provides that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist
within the United States, _or any place subject to their jurisdiction_."
If the term "the United States," as used in the Constitution, really
includes the Territories as an integral part, as Mr. Chief Justice
Marshall said, what, then, does the Constitution mean by the additional
words, "or any place subject to their jurisdiction"? Is it not too
plain for argument that the Constitution here refers to territory not a
part of the United States, but subject to its jurisdiction--territory,
for example, like the Sandwich Islands or the Philippines?

What, then, shall we say to the opinion of the great Chief
Justice?--for, after all, his is not a name to be dealt with lightly.
Well, first, it was a dictum, not a decision of the court. Next, in
another and later case, before the same eminent jurist, came a
constitutional expounder as eminent and as generally accepted,--none
other than Daniel Webster,--who took precisely the opposite view. He
was discussing the condition of certain territory on this continent
which we had recently acquired. Said Mr. Webster: "What is Florida? It
is no part of the United States. How can it be? Florida is to be
governed by Congress as it thinks proper. Congress might have done
anything--might have refused a trial by jury, and refused a
legislature." After this flat contradiction of the court's former
dictum, what happened? Mr. Webster won his case, and the Chief Justice
made not the slightest reference to his own previous and directly
conflicting opinion! Need we give it more attention now than Marshall
did then?

Mr. Webster maintained the same position long afterward, in the Senate
of the United States, in opposition to Mr. John C. Calhoun, and his
view has been continuously sustained since by the courts and by
congressional action. In the debate with Mr. Calhoun in February, 1849,
Mr. Webster said: "What is the Constitution of the United States? Is
not its very first principle that all within its influence and
comprehension shall be represented in the Legislature which it
establishes, with not only a right of debate and a right to vote in
both houses of Congress, but a right to partake in the choice of
President a