ent.
Com., p. 457, 458; 1 Burge Con. Laws, pp. 12, 127.)

We come now to the decision of this court in the case of Strader et
al. _v._ Graham, (10 How., p. 2.) The case came up from the Court of
Appeals, in the State of Kentucky. The question in the case was,
whether certain slaves of Graham, a resident of Kentucky, who had been
employed temporarily at several places in the State of Ohio, with
their master's consent, and had returned to Kentucky into his service,
had thereby become entitled to their freedom. The Court of Appeals
held that they had not. The case was brought to this court under the
twenty-fifth section of the judiciary act. This court held that it had
no jurisdiction, for the reason, the question was one that belonged
exclusively to the State of Kentucky. The Chief Justice, in delivering
the opinion of the court, observed that "every State has an undoubted
right to determine the status or domestic and social condition of the
persons domiciled within its territory, except in so far as the powers
of the States in this respect are restrained, or duties and
obligations imposed upon them, by the Constitution of the United
States. There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States, he
observes, that can in any degree control the law of Kentucky upon this
subject. And the condition of the negroes, therefore, as to freedom or
slavery, after their return, depended altogether upon the laws of that
State, and could not be influenced by the laws of Ohio. It was
exclusively in the power of Kentucky to determine, for herself,
whether their employment in another State should or should not make
them free on their return."

It has been supposed, in the argument on the part of the plaintiff,
that the eighth section of the act of Congress passed March 6, 1820,
(3 St. at Large, p. 544,) which prohibited slavery north of thirty-six
degrees thirty minutes, within which the plaintiff and his wife
temporarily resided at Fort Snelling, possessed some superior virtue
and effect, extra-territorially, and within the State of Missouri,
beyond that of the laws of Illinois, or those of Ohio in the case of
Strader et al. _v._ Graham. A similar ground was taken and urged upon
the court in the case just mentioned, under the ordinance of 1787,
which was enacted during the time of the Confederation, and re-enacted
by Congress after the adoption of the Constitution, with some
amendments adapting it to the new Government. (1 St. at L