The American Constitution is the exponent of the national compact. We affirm that it is an instrument which no man can innocently bind himself to support, because its anti-republican and anti-Christian requirements are explicit and peremptory;—at least, so explicit that, in regard to all the clauses pertaining to slavery, they have been uniformly understood and enforced in the same way by all the courts and by all the people; and so peremptory that no individual interpretation or authority can set them aside with impunity. It is not a ball of day, to be' moulded into any shape that party contrivance or caprice may choose it to assume. . . . It means precisely what those who framed and adopted it meant—NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS, as a matter of bargain and compro- '. mise. Even if it can be construed to mean something else...