made “in pursuance” of it.  Those states knew that the U.S.  Constitution had left nothing to be “implied” as to the power of Congress over the District; an admonition quite sufficient, one would think, to put them on their guard, and lead them to eschew vague implications, and to resort to stipulations.  They knew, moreover, that those were times when, in matters of high import, nothing was left to be “implied.”  The colonies were then panting from a twenty years’ conflict with the mother country, about bills of rights, charters, treaties, constitutions, grants, limitations, and acts of cession.  The severities of a long and terrible discipline had taught them to guard at all points legislative grants, that their exact import and limit might be self-evident—­leaving no scope for a blind “faith” that somehow in the lottery of chances, every ticket would turn up a prize.  Toil, suffering, blood, and treasure outpoured like water over a whole generation, counselled them to make all sure by the use of explicit terms, and well chosen words, and just enough of them.  The Constitution of the United States, with its amendments, those of the individual states, the national treaties, and the public documents of the general and state governments at that period, show the universal conviction of legislative bodies, that nothing should be left to be “implied,” when great public interests were at stake.

Further:  suppose Maryland and Virginia had expressed their “implied faith” in words, and embodied it in their acts of cession as a proviso, declaring that Congress should not “exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over the District,” but that the “case” of slavery should be an exception:  who does not know that Congress, if it had accepted the cession on those terms, would have violated the Constitution; and who that has studied the free mood of those times in its bearings on slavery—­proofs of which are given in scores on the preceding pages—­[See pp. 25-37.] can be made to believe that the people of the United States would have re-modelled their Constitution for the purpose of providing for slavery an inviolable sanctuary; that when driven in from its outposts, and everywhere retreating discomfited before the march of freedom, it might be received into everlasting habitations on the common homestead and hearth-stone of the republic?  Who can believe that Virginia made such a condition, or cherished such a purpose, when Washington, Jefferson, Wythe, Patrick Henry, St. George Tucker, and all her most illustrious men, were at that moment advocating the abolition of slavery by law; when Washington had said, two years before, that Maryland and Virginia “must have laws for the gradual abolition of slavery, and at a period not remote;” and when Jefferson in his letter to Dr. Price, three years before the cession, had said, speaking of Virginia, “This is the next state to which we may turn our eyes for