de
the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory.

The remaining sixteen of the "thirty-nine," so far as I have
discovered, have left no record of their understanding upon the direct
question of Federal control of slavery in the Federal Territories. But
there is much reason to believe that their understanding upon that
question would not have appeared different from that of their
twenty-three compeers, had it been manifested at all.

For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have purposely
omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any person,
however distinguished, other than the thirty-nine fathers who framed
the original Constitution; and, for the same reason, I have also
omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any of the
"thirty-nine" even on any other phase of the general question of
slavery. If we should look into their acts and declarations on those
other phases, as the foreign slave-trade, and the morality and policy
of slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct question
of Federal control of slavery in Federal Territories, the sixteen, if
they had acted at all, would probably have acted just as the
twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several of the most noted
anti-slavery men of those times,--as Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton,
and Gouverneur Morris,--while there was not one now known to have been
otherwise, unless it may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina.

The sum of the whole is that of our "thirty-nine" fathers who framed
the original Constitution, twenty-one--a clear majority of the
whole--certainly understood that no proper division of local from
Federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the
Federal Government to control slavery in the Federal Territories; while
all the rest probably had the same understanding. Such,
unquestionably, was the understanding of our fathers who framed the
original Constitution; and the text affirms that they understood the
question "better than we."

But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the question
manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. In and by the
original instrument, a mode was provided for amending it; and, as I
have already stated, the present frame of "the government under which
we live" consists of that original, and twelve amendatory articles
framed and adopted since. Those who now insist that Federal control o