There is a case equally analogous to the very matter we are now considering—­the prohibition or permission of slavery.  The ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in the territory northwest of the Ohio.  In 1790 Congress passed an act accepting the cession which the State of North Carolina had made of the western part of her territory, with the proviso, that in reference to the territory thus ceded Congress should pass no laws “tending to the emancipation of the slaves.”  Here was a precisely parallel case.  Here was a territory in which, in 1787, slavery was prohibited.  Here was a territory ceded by North Carolina, which became the territory of the United States south of the Ohio, in reference to which it was stipulated with North Carolina, that Congress should pass no laws tending to the emancipation of slaves.  But I believe it never occurred to any one that the legislation of 1790 acted back upon the ordinance of 1787, or furnished a rule by which any effect could be produced upon the state of things existing under that ordinance, in the territory to which it applied.

I certainly intend to do the distinguished chairman of the committee no injustice; and I am not sure that I fully comprehend his argument in this respect; but I think his report sustains the view which I now take of the subject:  that is, that the legislation of 1850 did not establish a principle which was designed to have any such effect as he intimates.  That report states how matters stood in those new Mexican territories.  It was alleged on the one hand that by the Mexican lex loci slavery was prohibited.  On the other hand that was denied, and it was maintained that the Constitution of the United States secures to every citizen the right to go there and take with him any property recognized as such by any of the States of the Union.  The report considers that a similar state of things now exists in Nebraska—­that the validity of the eighth section of the Missouri Act, by which slavery is prohibited in that Territory, is doubtful, and that it is maintained by many distinguished statesmen that Congress has no power to legislate on the subject.  Then, in this state of the controversy, the report maintains that the legislation of Congress in 1850 did not undertake to decide these questions.  Surely, if they did not undertake to decide them, they could not settle the principle which is at stake in them; and, unless they did decide them, the measures then adopted must be considered as specific measures, relating only to those case and not establishing a principle of general operation.  This seems to me to be as direct and conclusive as anything can be.