If we should look into their acts and
declarations on those other phases, as the foreign slave trade, and
the morality and policy of slavery generally, it would appear to us
that on the direct question of federal control of slavery in federal
territories, the sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably
have acted just as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were
several of the most noted anti-slavery men of those times--as Dr.
Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris--while there was
not one now known to have been otherwise, unless it may be John
Rutledge, of South Carolina.[24]
The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed
the original Constitution, twenty-one--a clear majority of the
whole--certainly understood that no proper division of local from
federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the
Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories;
while all the rest probably had the same understanding. Such,
unquestionably, was the understanding of our fathers who framed the
original Constitution; and the text affirms that they understood the
question "better than we."
But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the
question manifested by the framers of the original Constitution.
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