[11]
In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution, an
act was passed to enforce the Ordinance of '87, including the
prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. The bill for
this act was reported by one of the "thirty-nine," Thomas
Fitzsimmons, then a member of the House of Representatives from
Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages without a word of
opposition, and finally passed both branches without yeas and nays,
which is equivalent to an unanimous passage.[12] In this Congress,
there were sixteen of the thirty-nine fathers who framed the
original Constitution. They were John Langdon, Nicholas Oilman, Wm.
S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William
Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Clymer,
Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, James
Madison.[13]
This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from
federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, properly
forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in the federal territory; else
both their fidelity to correct principle, and their oath to support
the Constitution, would have constrained them to oppose the
prohibition.
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