[Footnote A:  It may be replied, The colored people were held as property by the laws of Louisiana previously to the cession, and that Congress had no right to divest the newly acquired citizens of their property.  This statement is evasive.  It does not include, nor touch the question, which is this:—­Had Congress, or the treaty-making power, a right to recognise, and, by recognising, to establish, in a territory that had no claim of privilege, on the ground of being part of one of the “Original States,” a condition of things that it could not establish directly, because there was no grant in the constitution of power, direct or incidental, to do so—­and because, to do so, was in downright oppugnancy to the principles of the Constitution itself?  The question may be easily answered by stating the following case:—­Suppose a law had existed in Louisiana, previous to the cession, by which the children—­male and female—­of all such parents as were not owners of real estate of the yearly value of $500, had been—­no matter how long—­held in slavery by their more wealthy land-holding neighbors:—­would Congress, under the Constitution, have a right (by recognising) to establish, for ever, such a relation as one white person, under such a law, might hold to another?  Surely not.  And yet no substantial difference between the two cases can be pointed out.]

In this case, the violation of the Constitution was suffered to pass with but little opposition, except from Massachusetts, because we were content to receive in exchange, multiplied commercial benefits and enlarged territorial limits.

The next stride that slavery made over the Constitution was in the admission of the State of Louisiana into the Union. She could claim no favor as part of an “Original State.”  At this point, it might have been supposed, the friends of Freedom and of the Constitution according to its original intent, would have made a stand.  But no:  with the exception of Massachusetts, they hesitated and were persuaded to acquiesce, because the country was just about entering into a war with England, and the crisis was unpropitious for discussing questions that would create divisions between different sections of the Union.  We must wait till the country was at peace.  Thus it was that Louisiana was admitted without a controversy.

Next followed, in 1817 and 1820, Mississippi and Alabama—­admitted after the example of Kentucky and Tennessee, without any contest.

Meantime, Florida had given some uneasiness to the slaveholders of the neighboring states; and for their accommodation chiefly, a negociation was set on foot by the government to purchase it.