f
slavery in Federal Territories violates the Constitution, point us to
the provisions which they suppose it thus violates; and, I understand,
they all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in
the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case,
plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides that "no
person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due
process of law;" while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant
themselves upon the tenth amendment, providing that "the powers not
delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the
States respectively, or to the people."

Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed by the first
Congress which sat under the Constitution--the identical Congress which
passed the act already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition of slavery
in the Northwestern Territory. Not only was it the same Congress, but
they were the identical, same individual men who, at the same session,
and at the same time within the session, had under consideration, and
in progress toward maturity, these constitutional amendments, and this
act prohibiting slavery in all the territory the nation then owned.
The constitutional amendments were introduced before, and passed after,
the act enforcing the Ordinance of '87; so that, during the whole
pendency of the act to enforce the Ordinance, the constitutional
amendments were also pending.

That Congress, consisting in all of seventy-six members, including
sixteen of the framers of the original Constitution, as before stated,
were preeminently our fathers who framed that part of "the Government
under which we live," which is now claimed as forbidding the Federal
Government to control slavery in the Federal Territories.

Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm that
the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, and carried to
maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other?
And does not such affirmation become impudently absurd when coupled
with the other affirmation, from the same mouth, that those who did the
two things, alleged to be inconsistent, understood whether they really
were inconsistent better than we--better than he who affirms that they
are inconsistent?

It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the
original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress
which framed th