an make either white or black men
slaves. In organizing the Government of a Territory, Congress is
limited to means appropriate to the attainment of the constitutional
object. No powers can be exercised which are prohibited by the
Constitution, or which are contrary to its spirit; so that, whether
the object may be the protection of the persons and property of
purchasers of the public lands, or of communities who have been
annexed to the Union by conquest or purchase, they are initiatory to
the establishment of State Governments, and no more power can be
claimed or exercised than is necessary to the attainment of the end.
This is the limitation of all the Federal powers.

But Congress has no power to regulate the internal concerns of a
State, as of a Territory; consequently, in providing for the
Government of a Territory, to some extent, the combined powers of the
Federal and State Governments are necessarily exercised.

If Congress should deem slaves or free colored persons injurious to
the population of a free Territory, as conducing to lessen the value
of the public lands, or on any other ground connected with the public
interest, they have the power to prohibit them from becoming settlers
in it. This can be sustained on the ground of a sound national policy,
which is so clearly shown in our history by practical results, that it
would seem no considerate individual can question it. And, as regards
any unfairness of such a policy to our Southern brethren, as urged in
the argument, it is only necessary to say that, with one-fourth of the
Federal population of the Union, they have in the slave States a
larger extent of fertile territory than is included in the free
States; and it is submitted, if masters of slaves be restricted from
bringing them into free territory, that the restriction on the free
citizens of non-slaveholding States, by bringing slaves into free
territory, is four times greater than that complained of by the South.
But, not only so; some three or four hundred thousand holders of
slaves, by bringing them into free territory, impose a restriction on
twenty millions of the free States. The repugnancy to slavery would
probably prevent fifty or a hundred freemen from settling in a slave
Territory, where one slaveholder would be prevented from settling in a
free Territory.

This remark is made in answer to the argument urged, that a
prohibition of slavery in the free Territories is inconsistent with
the