veral States, when it is providing for the exercise of the
powers granted or the privileges secured to the citizen. It does not
define what description of persons are intended to be included under
these terms, or who shall be regarded as a citizen and one of the
people. It uses them as terms so well understood, that no further
description or definition was necessary.

But there are two clauses in the Constitution which point directly and
specifically to the negro race as a separate class of persons, and
show clearly that they were not regarded as a portion of the people or
citizens of the Government then formed.

One of these clauses reserves to each of the thirteen States the right
to import slaves until the year 1808, if it thinks proper. And the
importation which it thus sanctions was unquestionably of persons of
the race of which we are speaking, as the traffic in slaves in the
United States had always been confined to them. And by the other
provision the States pledge themselves to each other to maintain the
right of property of the master, by delivering up to him any slave who
may have escaped from his service, and be found within their
respective territories. By the first above-mentioned clause,
therefore, the right to purchase and hold this property is directly
sanctioned and authorized for twenty years by the people who framed
the Constitution. And by the second, they pledge themselves to
maintain and uphold the right of the master in the manner specified,
as long as the Government they then formed should endure. And these
two provisions show, conclusively, that neither the description of
persons therein referred to, nor their descendants, were embraced in
any of the other provisions of the Constitution; for certainly these
two clauses were not intended to confer on them or their posterity the
blessings of liberty, or any of the personal rights so carefully
provided for the citizen.

No one of that race had ever migrated to the United States
voluntarily; all of them had been brought here as articles of
merchandise. The number that had been emancipated at that time were
but few in comparison with those held in slavery; and they were
identified in the public mind with the race to which they belonged,
and regarded as a part of the slave population rather than the free.
It is obvious that they were not even in the minds of the framers of
the Constitution when they were conferring special rights and
privileges u