It is more than an oath of allegiance; more than a mere promise that we will not resist the laws.  For it is an engagement to “support them”; as an officer of government, to carry them into effect.  Without such a promise on the part of its functionaries, how could government exist?  It is more than the expression of that obligation which rests on all peaceable citizens to submit to laws, even though they will not actively support them.  For it is the promise which the judge makes, that he will actually do the business of the courts; which the sheriff assumes, that he will actually execute the laws.

Let it be remarked, that it is an oath to support the Constitution—­that is, the whole of it; there are no exceptions.  And let it be remembered, that by it each one makes a contract with the whole nation, that he will do certain acts.

3d.  What is the Constitution which each voter thus engages to support?

It contains the following clauses: 

Art. 1, Sect. 2.  Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States, which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.

Art. 1, Sect. 8.  Congress shall have power ... to suppress insurrections.

Art. 4, Sec. 2.  No person, held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

Art. 4, Sect. 4.  The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government; and shall protect each of them against invasion; and, on application of the legislature, or of the executive, (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.

The first of these clauses, relating to representation, gives to 10,000 inhabitants of Carolina equal weight in the government with 40,000 inhabitants of Massachusetts, provided they are rich enough to hold 50,000 slaves:—­and accordingly confers on a slaveholding community additional political power for every slave held among them, thus tempting them to continue to uphold the system.

Its result has been, in the language of John Quincy Adams, “to make the preservation, propagation, and perpetuation of slavery the vital and animating spirit of the National Government;” and again, to enable “a knot of slaveholders to give the law and prescribe the policy of the country.”  So that “since 1830 slavery, slaveholding, slavebreeding, and slavetrading have formed the whole foundation of the policy of the Federal Government.”  The