of the Constitution, there is nothing in the legislation of the State indicating any change of opinion as to the relative rights and positions of the white and black races in this country, or indicating that it meant to place the latter, when free, upon a level with its citizens. And certainly nothing which would have led the slaveholding States to suppose that Connecticut designed to claim for them, under the new Constitution, the equal rights and privileges, and rank of citizens, in every other State.

The first step taken by Connecticut upon this subject was as early as 1774, when it passed an act forbidding the further importation of slaves into the State. But the section containing the prohibition is introduced by the following preamble:

"And whereas the increase of slaves into this State is injurious to the poor, and inconvenient."

This recital would appear to have been carefully introduced, in order to prevent any misunderstanding of the motive which induced the legislature to pass the law, and place it distinctly upon the interest and convenience of the white population-excluding the inference that it might have been intended, in any degree, for the benefit of the other.

And in the act of 1784, by which the issue of slaves, born after the time therein mentioned, were to be free at a certain age, the section is again introduced by a preamble assigning a similar motive for the act. It is in these words:

"Whereas, sound policy requires that the abolition of slavery should be effected as soon as may be consistent with the rights of individuals and the public safety and welfare," -showing that the right of property in the master was to be protected, and that the measure was one of policy, and to prevent the injury and inconvenience to the whites, of a a slave population in the State.

And still further pursuing its legislation, we find that in

the same statute passed in 1774, which prohibited the further importation of slaves into the State, there is also a provision by which any negro, Indian, or mulatto servant, who was found wandering out of the town or place to which he belonged, without a written pass such as therein described, was made liable to be seized by any one, and taken before the next authority, to be examined and delivered up to his master, who was required to pay the charge which had accrued thereby. And a subsequent section of the same law provided, that if any free negro shall travel without such pass, and shall be stopped, seized, or taken up, he shall pay all charges arising thereby. And this law was in full operation when the Constitution of the United States was adopted, and was not repealed till 1797. So that up to that time free 'negroes and mulattoes were associated with servants and slaves in the police regulations established by the laws of the State.

And again, in 1833, Connecticut passed another law which made it penal to set up or establish any school in that State for the instruction of persons of the African race, not inhabitants of the State, or to instruct or teach in any such school or institution, or board or harbor for that purpose, any such person, without the previous consent in writing of the civil authority of the town in which such school or institution might be.

And it appears by the case of Crandell v. the State, reported in 10 Conn. Rep., 340, that upon an information filed against Prudence Crandell for a violation of this law, one of the points raised in the defense was, that the law was a violation of the Constitution of the United States; and that the persons instructed, although of the African race, were citizens of other States, and therefore entitled to the rights and privileges of citizens in the State of Connecticut. But Chief Justice Dagget, before whom the case was tried, held, that persons of that description were not citizens of a

State within the meaning of the word citizen in the Constitution of the United States, and were not therefore entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens in other States.

We extract the following from the opinion of Judge Daniels in the same case:

The power of Congress to impose the prohibition in the eighth section of the act of 1820, has been advocated upon an attempted construction of the second clause of the third section of the fourth article of the Constitution, which declares that "Congress shall have power to dispose of and to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory and other property belonging to the United States,"

In the discussion in both houses of Congress, at the time of adopting the eighth section of the act of 1820, great weight was given to the peculiar language of this clause, viz., territory and other property belonging to the United States, as going to show that power of disposing of and regulating, thereby vested in Congress, was restricted to a proprietary interest in the territory of land comprised therein, and did not extend to the personal or political rights of citizens or settlers, inasmuch as this phrase in the Constitution, "territory or other property," identified territory with property, and inasmuch as citizens or persons could not be property, and especially were not property belonging to the United States. And upon every principle of reason or necessity, this power to dispose of and to regulate the territory of the nation could be designed to extend no further to its preservation and appropriation to the uses of those to whom it belonged, viz., the nation. Scarcely anything more illogical or extravagant can be imagined than the attempt to deduce from this provision in the Constitution a power to destroy or in any wise to impair the civil and political rights of the citizens of the United States, and much more so the power to establish inequalities

amongst those citizens by creating privileges in one class of those cit ens, and by the disfranchisement of other portions or classes by degrading them from the position they previously occupied.

There can exist no rational or natural connection or affinity between a pretension like this and the power vested by the Constitution in Congress with regard to the territories; on the contrary, there is an absolute incongruity between them.

But whatever the power vested by Congress, and whatever the precise subject to which that power extended, it is clear that the power related to a subject appertaining to the United States, and one to be disposed of and regulated for the benefit and under the authority of the United States. Congress was made simply the agent or trustee for the United States, upon equal grounds, legal or equitable. Congress could not appropriate that subject to any one class or portion of the people to the exclusion of others politically and constitutionally equals; but every citizen would, if any one could claim it, have the like rights of purchase, settlement, occupation, or any other right in their national territory.

Nothing can be more conclusive to show the equality of this with every other right in all the citizens of the United States, and the iniquity and absurdity of the pretensions to exclude or to disfranchise a portion of them because they are the owners of slaves, than the fact that the same instrument, which imparts to Congress its very existence, and its very functions, guarantees to the slaveholder the title to his property, and gives him the right to reclaim his property throughout the country; and, further, that the only private property which the Constitution has specifically recognized, and has imposed it as a direct obligation both on the States and the federal government to protect and enforce, is the property of the master in his slave: no other right of

property is placed by the Constitution on the same high ground, nor shielded by a similar guarantee.

Can there be imputed to the sages and patriots by whom the Constitution was framed, or can there be detected in the text of that Constitution, or in any rational construction or implication deducible therefrom, a contradiction so palpable as would exist between a pledge to the slaveholder of an equality with his fellow-citizens, and of the formal and solemn assurance for the security and enjoyment of his property, and a warrant given as it were uno flatu to another, to rob him of that property, or to subject him to proscription and disfranchisement for possessing, or for endeavoring to retain it? The injustice and extravagance necessarily implied in a supposition like this, cannot be rationally imputed to the patriotic or the honest, or to those who were merely sane.

A conclusion in favor of the prohibitory power in Con gress, as asserted in the eighth section of the act of 1820, has been attempted, as deducible from the precedent of the ordinance of the Convention of 1787, concerning the cession by Virginia of the territory northwest of the Ohio: the provision in which ordinance relative to slavery, it has been attempted to impose upon other and subsequently acquired territory.

The first circumstance which, in the consideration of thi provision, impresses itself upon my mind, is its utter futility and want of authority. This court has, in repeated instances, ruled; that whatever may have been the force accorded to this ordinance of 1787 at the period of its enactment, its authority and effect ceased, and yielded to the paramount authority of the Constitution, from the period of the adoption of the latter. Such is the principle ruled in the cases of Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, (3 How, 212); Parmoli v. The First Municipality of New Orleans, (3 How, 589;) Strader v. Graham, (16 How, 82). But apart from the