That was an act of union by the United States in Congress assembled.  But this act of itself did nothing to establish over them a general government.  They had a Congress.  They had Articles of Confederation to prosecute the war.  But thus far they were still, essentially, separate and independent each of the other.  They had entered into a simple confederacy, and nothing more.  No State was bound by what it did not itself agree to, or what was done according to the provisions of the confederation.  That was the state of things, Gentlemen, at that time.  The war went on; victory crowned the American arms; our independence was acknowledged.  The States were then united together under a confederacy of very limited powers.  It could levy no taxes.  It could not enforce its own decrees.  It was a confederacy, instead of a united government.  Experience showed that this was insufficient and inefficient.  Accordingly, beginning as far back almost as the close of the war, measures were taken for the formation of a united government, a government in the strict sense of the term, a government that could pass laws binding on the individual citizens of all the States, and which could enforce those laws by its executive powers, having them interpreted by a judicial power belonging to the government itself, and yet a government strictly limited in its nature.  Well, Gentlemen, this led to the formation of the Constitution of the United States, and that instrument was framed on the idea of a limited government.  It proposed to leave, and did leave, the different domestic institutions of the several States to themselves.  It did not propose consolidation.  It did not propose that the laws of Virginia should be the laws of New York, or that the laws of New York should be the laws of Massachusetts.  It proposed only that, for certain purposes and to a certain extent, there should be a united government, and that that government should have the power of executing its own laws.  All the rest was left to the several States.

We now come, Gentlemen, to the very point of the case.  At that time slavery existed in the Southern States, entailed upon them in the time of the supremacy of British laws over us.  There it was.  It was obnoxious to the Middle and Eastern States, and honestly and seriously disliked, as the records of the country will show, by the Southern States themselves.  Now, how was it to be dealt with?  Were the Northern and Middle States to exclude from the government those States of the South which had produced a Washington, a Laurens, and other distinguished patriots, who had so truly served, and so greatly honored, the whole country?  Were they to be excluded from the new government because they tolerated the institution of slavery?  Your fathers and my fathers did not think so.  They did not see that it would be of the least advantage to the slaves of the Southern States, to cut off the South from all connection with the North.  Their views of humanity led to no such