We claim
this, and neither more NOR LESS."
Throughout the whole of that case, in which the right to pass through
New York with slaves at the pleasure of the slave owners is maintained,
it is nowhere contended that the statute is contrary to the Constitution
of New York; but that the statute and the Constitution of the State are
both contrary to the Constitution of the United States.
The State of Virginia, not content with the decision of our own courts
upon the right claimed by them, is now engaged in carrying this, the
Lemon case, to the Supreme Court of the United States, hoping by a
decision there, in accordance with the intimations in the Dred Scott
case, to overthrow the Constitution of New York.
Senator Toombs, of Georgia, has claimed, in the Senate, that laws of
Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode
Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin, for the exclusion of slavery, conceded
to be warranted by the State Constitutions, are contrary to the
Constitution of the United States, and has asked for the enactment of
laws by the General Government which shall override the laws of those
States and the Constitutions which authorize them.]
[Footnote 40:--"Policy, humanity, and Christianity, alike forbid the
extension of the evils of free society to new people and coming
generations.
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