The Constitutional amendments were introduced
before, and passed after, the act enforcing the Ordinance of '87; so
that, during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the Ordinance,
the Constitutional amendments were also pending.[26]
The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen of the
framers of the original Constitution, as before stated, were
pre-eminently our fathers who framed that part of "the Government
under which we live," which is now claimed as forbidding the Federal
Government to control slavery in the federal territories.
Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm
that the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, and
carried to maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent
with each other? And does not such affirmation become impudently
absurd when coupled with the other affirmation from the same mouth,
that those who did the two things, alleged to be inconsistent,
understood whether they really were inconsistent better than
we--better than he who affirms that they are inconsistent?
It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the
original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress
which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly
include those who may be fairly called "our fathers who framed the
Government under which we live.
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