Again the Constitution was amended by the same process, after the election of President Jefferson by the House of Representatives, in February, 1803.  This amendment was rendered necessary to prevent a recurrence of the dangers which had seriously threatened the existence of the Government during the pendency of that election.  The article for its own amendment was intended to secure the amicable adjustment of conflicting constitutional questions like the present which might arise between the governments of the States and that of the United States.  This appears from contemporaneous history.  In this connection I shall merely call attention to a few sentences in Mr. Madison’s justly celebrated report, in 1799, to the legislature of Virginia.  In this he ably and conclusively defended the resolutions of the preceding legislature against the strictures of several other State legislatures.  These were mainly rounded upon the protest of the Virginia legislature against the “alien and sedition acts,” as “palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution.”  In pointing out the peaceful and constitutional remedies—­and he referred to none other—­to which the States were authorized to resort on such occasions, he concludes by saying that—­

The legislatures of the States might have made a direct representation to Congress with a view to obtain a rescinding of the two offensive acts, or they might have represented to their respective Senators in Congress their wish that two-thirds thereof would propose an explanatory amendment to the Constitution; or two-thirds of themselves, if such had been their option, might by an application to Congress have obtained a convention for the same object.

This is the very course which I earnestly recommend in order to obtain an “explanatory amendment” of the Constitution on the subject of slavery.  This might originate with Congress or the State legislatures, as may be deemed most advisable to attain the object.  The explanatory amendment might be confined to the final settlement of the true construction of the Constitution on three special points: 

1.  An express recognition of the right of property in slaves in the States where it now exists or may hereafter exist.

2.  The duty of protecting this right in all the common Territories throughout their Territorial existence, and until they shall be admitted as States into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitutions may prescribe.

3.  A like recognition of the right of the master to have his slave who has escaped from one State to another restored and “delivered up” to him, and of the validity of the fugitive-slave law enacted for this purpose, together with a declaration that all State laws impairing or defeating this right are violations of the Constitution, and are consequently null and void.  It may be objected that this construction of the Constitution has already been settled by the Supreme Court of the United States, and what more