now exist in Europe, nor in any other civilized portion of the habitable globe.  It is not a predial slavery.  It is not analogous to the case of the predial slaves, or slaves glebae adscripti of Russia, or Hungary, or other states.  It is a peculiar system of personal slavery, by which the person who is called a slave is transferable as a chattel, from hand to hand.  I speak of this as a fact; and that is the fact.  And I will say further, perhaps other gentlemen may remember the instances, that although slavery, as a system of servitude attached to the earth, exists in various countries of Europe, I am not at the present moment aware of any place on the globe in which this property of man in a human being as a slave, transferable as a chattel, exists, except America.  Now, that it existed, in the form in which it still exists, in certain States, at the formation of this Constitution, and that the framers of that instrument, and those who adopted it, agreed that, as far as it existed, it should not be disturbed or interfered with by the new general government, there is no doubt.

The Constitution of the United States recognizes it as an existing fact, an existing relation between the inhabitants of the Southern States.  I do not call it an “institution,” because that term is not applicable to it; for that seems to imply a voluntary establishment.  When I first came here, it was a matter of frequent reproach to England, the mother country, that slavery had been entailed upon the colonies by her, against their consent, and that which is now considered a cherished “institution” was then regarded as, I will not say an evil, but an entailment on the Colonies by the policy of the mother country against their wishes.  At any rate, it stands upon the Constitution.  The Constitution was adopted in 1788, and went into operation in 1789.  When it was adopted, the state of the country was this:  slavery existed in the Southern States; there was a very large extent of unoccupied territory, the whole Northwestern Territory, which, it was understood, was destined to be formed into States; and it was then determined that no slavery should exist in this territory.  I gather now, as a matter of inference from the history of the time and the history of the debates, that the prevailing motives with the North for agreeing to this recognition of the existence of slavery in the Southern States, and giving a representation to those States founded in part upon their slaves, rested on the supposition that no acquisition of territory would be made to form new States on the southern frontier of this country, either by cession or conquest.  No one looked to any acquisition of new territory on the southern or southwestern frontier.  The exclusion of slavery from the Northwestern Territory and the prospective abolition of the foreign slave trade were generally, the former unanimously, agreed to; and on the basis of these considerations, the South insisted that where slavery existed it should not be interfered with, and that it should have a certain ratio of representation in Congress.  And now, Sir, I am one, who, believing such to be the understanding on which the Constitution was framed, mean to abide by it.