eneral belief among the people,
that slavery would for a while live on, on sufferance; that the
government, until the nation should have become attached to the
constitution, and cemented and consolidated by the habit of union, would
be too weak, and too easily corrupted by the innumerable and powerful
appliances of slaveholders, to wrestle with and strangle slavery. But to
suppose that the nation at large did not look upon the constitution as
designed to destroy slavery, whenever its principles should be carried
into full effect, is obviously to suppose an intellectual impossibility;
for the instrument was plain, and the people had common sense; and those
two facts cannot stand together consistently with the idea that there
was any general, or even any considerable misunderstanding of its
meaning.

CHAPTER XII.

THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS OF 1845.

Of all the existing state constitutions, (excepting that of Florida,
which I have not seen,) not one of them contains provisions that are
sufficient, (or that would be sufficient if not restrained by the
constitution of the United States,) to authorize the slavery that exists
in the states. The material deficiency in all of them is, that they
neither designate, nor give the legislatures any authority to designate
the persons, who may be made slaves. Without such a provision, all their
other provisions in regard to slaves are nugatory, simply because their
application is legally unknown. They would apply as well to whites as to
blacks, and would as much authorize the enslavement of whites as of
blacks.

We have before seen that none of the state constitutions, that were in
existence in 1789, recognized slavery at all. Since that time, four of
the old thirteen states, viz., Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina
and Georgia, have altered their constitutions so as to make them
recognize slavery; yet not so as to provide for any legal designation of
the persons to be made slaves.

The constitution of South Carolina has a provision that implies that
_some_ of the slaves, at least, are "negroes;" but not that all slaves
are negroes, nor that all negroes are slaves. The provision, therefore,
amounts to nothing for the purposes of a constitutional designation of
the persons who may be made slaves.

The constitutions of Tennessee and Louisiana make no direct mention of
slaves; and have no provisions in favor of slavery, unless the general
one for continuing existing law