charged with designing
to sanction any of the secret intentions of the convention. When the
states sent delegates to the convention, no avowal was made of any
intention to give any national sanction to slavery. The articles of
confederation had given none; the then existing state constitutions gave
none; and it could not have been reasonably anticipated by the people
that any would have been either asked for or granted in the new
constitution. If such a purpose had been avowed by those who were at the
bottom of the movement, the convention would doubtless never have been
held. The avowed objects of the convention were of a totally different
character. Commercial, industrial and defensive motives were the
prominent ones avowed. When, then, the constitution came from the hands
of such a convention, unstained with any legal or tangible sanction of
slavery, were the people--who, from the nature of the case, could not
assemble to draft one for themselves--bound either to discard it, or
hold themselves responsible for all the secret intentions of those who
had drafted it? Had they no power to adopt its legal meaning, and that
alone! Unquestionably they had the power; and, as matter of law, as well
as fact, it is equally unquestionable that they exercised it. Nothing
else than the constitution, as a legal instrument, was offered to them
for their adoption. Nothing else was legally before them that they could
adopt. Nothing else, therefore, did they adopt.

This alleged design, on the part of the convention, to sanction slavery,
is obviously of no consequence whatever, unless it can be transferred to
the people who adopted the constitution. Has any such transfer ever been
shown? Nothing of the kind. It may have been known among politicians;
and may have found its way into some of the state conventions. But there
probably is not a little of evidence in existence, that it was generally
known among the mass of the people. And, in the nature of things, it was
nearly impossible that it should have been known by them. The national
convention had sat with closed doors. Nothing was known of their
discussions, except what was personally reported by the members. Even
the discussions in the _state_ conventions could not have been known to
the people at large; certainly not until after the constitution had been
ratified by those conventions. The ratification of the instrument, by
those conventions, followed close on the heels of their
dis