But granting this caoutchouc property, this migratory power, in the Constitution, the inference that it would take Slavery with it is a still more monstrous error than the original premises.  Slavery as such is not recognized or guarantied by the Federal Constitution.  Whatever the five slave-holding judges of the Supreme Court may seek to maintain, they cannot upset the universal logic of the law, nor extinguish the fundamental principles of our political system.  Slavery exists only by the local or municipal usage of the States in which it exists; it is there universally defined as a right of property in man; whereas the Constitution of the United States, in all its prohibitions and provisions, designates and acts upon human beings only as persons.  Whatever their characters or relations under the laws of the States, they are, under the Federal Constitution, MEN.  Nowhere in that immortal paper is there an iota or tittle which gives countenance to the idea that human beings may be held as property.  It speaks of “persons held to service or labor,” as apprentices, for instance,—­and of persons other than free, i.e. not politically citizens, as Indians and some negroes; but it does not speak of Slaves or of Slavery; on the contrary, in every part, it legislates for men solely as men.  The laws of each State, and the relations of the various inhabitants of each State, it of course recognizes as valid within each State; but it recognizes them as resting exclusively on the municipal authority of the State, and not on its own authority.  Against nothing did the framers of the Constitution more strenuously contend than against the admission of any phrase sanctioning the tenure of man as property.  They refused even to allow of the use of the word servitude, so much did they hate the thing; and Madison expressed their almost unanimous sentiment when he exclaimed, “We intend this Constitution to be THE GREAT CHARTER OF HUMAN LIBERTY to the unborn millions who shall yet enjoy its protection, and who should not see that such an institution as Slavery was ever known in our midst.”  In that spirit was the instrument framed, and in that spirit was it administered, while its framers lived.

Nevertheless, under the twofold pretence we have cited,—­the one reconciling the conscience with the cowardice of the North, and the other conceding the arrogant pretensions of the South,—­the negation of the power of the central government over Slavery was carried into effect.  By a legislative hocus-pocus, known as the Compromise Measures of 1850, Congress, contrary to the uniform tendency of bodies entrusted with a discretion, vacated instead of enlarging its powers.  Its sovereign function of territorial legislation was abdicated, in favor of that wretched and ragged pretender, Squatter Sovereignty; and silly or misguided people everywhere, who professed to regard as dangerous that political excitement and agitation which are the life of republics, hailed the accession