[Footnote A:  The fact, that under the articles of Confederation, slaveholders, whose slaves had escaped into free states, had no legal power to force them back,—­that now they have no power to recover, by process of law, their slaves who escape to Canada, the South American States, or to Europe—­the case already cited, in which the Supreme Court of Louisiana decided, that residence “for one moment,” under the laws of France emancipated an American slave—­the case of Fulton vs..  Lewis, 3 Har. and John’s Reps., 56, where the slave of a St. Domingo slaveholder, who brought him to Maryland in ’93, was pronounced free by the Maryland Court of Appeals—­are illustrations of the acknowledged truth here asserted, that by the consent of the civilized world, and on the principles of universal law, slaves are not “property,” and that whenever held as property under law, it is only by positive legislative acts, forcibly setting aside the law of nature, the common law, and the principles of universal justice and right between man and man,—­principles paramount to all law, and from which alone law, derives its intrinsic authoritative sanction.]

9.  CONGRESS HAS UNQUESTIONABLE POWER TO ADOPT THE COMMON LAW, AS THE LEGAL SYSTEM, WITHIN ITS EXCLUSIVE JURISDICTION.—­This has been done, with certain restrictions, in most of the States, either by legislative acts or by constitutional implication.  THE COMMON LAW KNOWS NO SLAVES.  Its principles annihilate slavery wherever they touch it.  It is a universal, unconditional, abolition act.  Wherever slavery is a legal system, it is so only by statute law, and in violation of the common law.  The declaration of Lord Chief Justice Holt, that, “by the common law, no man can have property in another,” is an acknowledged axiom, and based upon the well known common law definition of property.  “The subjects of dominion or property are things, as contra-distinguished from persons.”  Let Congress adopt the common law in the District of Columbia, and slavery there is at once abolished.  Congress may well be at home in common law legislation, for the common law is the grand element of the United States Constitution.  All its fundamental provisions are instinct with its spirit; and its existence, principles, and paramount authority, are presupposed and assumed throughout the whole.  The preamble of the Constitution plants the standard of the Common Law immovably in its foreground.  “We, the people of the United States, in order to ESTABLISH JUSTICE, &c., do ordain and establish this Constitution;” thus proclaiming devotion to JUSTICE, as the controlling motive in the organization of the Government, and its secure establishment the chief object of its aims.  By this most solemn recognition, the common law, that grand legal embodyment of “justice” and fundamental right—­was made the Groundwork of the Constitution, and intrenched behind its strongest munitions.  The second clause of Sec. 9, Art. 1; Sec. 4, Art. 2, and the last clause of Sec. 2, Art. 3, with Articles 7, 8, 9, and 13 of the Amendments, are also express recognitions of the common law as the presiding Genius of the Constitution.