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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



the first instance; discretionary, depending 

 upon the will of the law-making power of the 

 country for the admission of new States. Then 

 there are imposed upon it conditions and quali- 

 fications respecting the carving of new States 

 out of old ones, and no other conditions arid no 

 other qualification whatever. Therefore I take 

 it to be plain and beyond contradiction that it 

 is within the clear constitutional power of Con- 

 gress to prescribe the terms and qualifications 

 and the time and the fitness upon which any 

 new State shall be created out of any of its 

 Territories. It is a right wkich cannot be 

 questioned at all ; and it is a right which, inde- 

 pendent of the Constitution, flows logically and 

 necessarily "from the supreme legislative do- 

 minion which we have over the Territories of 

 the United States; Territories many of which, 

 this very Territory indeed itself, were not with- 

 in the dominion of this Government when the 

 Constitution was formed, and which, therefore, 

 the Constitution itself by its own vigor never 

 omild have operated upon. "We having exclu- 

 sive and complete jurisdiction over these Terri- 

 tories, and having complete discretionary pow- 

 er by the express letter of the Constitution 

 over the admission of States, is it to be said 

 that we must shut our eyes to what is con- 

 tained in the constitution of a Territory which 

 is offered to us for acceptance, and are we to be 

 told that this objection or that objection which 

 may be just in itself cannot be heard because 

 we are trampling upon the rights of any body 

 or set of men ? I take it not. There is no in- 

 herent right in the people of any Territory to 

 be constituted into a State. Congress may 

 never organize a Territory at all; it may never 

 dispose of its public lands there ; when organ- 

 ized, it may keep it in the perpetual condition 

 of a Territory if it pleases ; because all the con- 

 siderations which govern such questions are 

 considerations which merely appeal to the or- 

 dinary legislative discretion of the law-making 

 power, and therefore every circumstance and 

 consideration which enters into the fitness of 

 the thing itself which is proposed to be done 

 is a matter that we have no right to set 

 aside." 



Mr. Howard, of Michigan, in reply, said : " I 

 did not intend to speak again on this bill, but I 

 do not feel like suffering the final vote to be 

 taken upon it without paying some attention 

 to the ground which has been taken in the dis- 

 cussion by the Senator from Vermont. If I un- 

 derstood the argument and observations of the 

 Senator rightly, his principle is this : that under 

 that clause of the Constitution which declares 

 that the Congress may admit new States into 

 thite Union, it is competent for Congress to an- 

 nex as fundamental conditions any require- 

 ments that Congress may see fit, and on the 

 consent of the people of the Territory to those 

 conditions, if they are declared to be irrevoca- 

 ble, without the consent of Congress, they are 

 to remain in force as law forever, or so long as 

 Congress withholds its consent. I aim to state 



the proposition of the Senator fairly. If I fail 

 to do so, I wish he would correct me.'' 

 Mr. Edmunds : u You have stated it exactly." 

 Mr. Howard : " Now, sir, I cannot under any 

 circumstances give my consent to that princi- 

 ple. I do not believe Congress possesses such 

 a power. The power granted is simple and 

 plain ; it is ' to admit new States into this 

 Union.' To admit new States into the Union 

 is to invest those States, of course, and neces- 

 sarily, with every power, every faculty, every 

 constitutional provision which pertains to any 

 of the States in the Union under the Constitu- 

 tion. It is to impart to the new States the 

 same rights of legislation, the same sovereign 

 power that belongs to the old States or to any 

 other States, for in respect to political power 

 it is impossible, in the very nature of things, 

 that there should not be a perfect equality 

 among the States. 



"If we may annex an irrevocable, funda- 

 mental condition which is to underlie the con- 

 stitution of every new State that we admit, 

 then I foresee consequences which will not be 

 entirely agreeable to the people of the United 

 States. For instance, if we may annex as a fun- 

 damental condition that the black man shall 

 have an equal right to vote with the white man, 

 we may with equal propriety and with equal 

 assertion of law say that the whole population, 

 male and female, black and white, shall pos- 

 sess this right, and we may incorporate it in the 

 State constitution in the form of this so-called 

 irrevocable condition, not to be repealed or 

 altered without the consent of Congress. 



" "We may go further; we may declare that in 

 their constitution the people of the Territory 

 shall enact that real estate shall descend un- 

 equally to the heirs-at-law of a decedent ; that 

 it shall descend entirely to the male heirs or 

 entirely to the female heirs ; we may declare 

 that tliis constitution shall contain a clause pro- 

 hibiting the resort to any legal proceedings for 

 the collection of debt, leaving every debt as an 

 obligation of honor, to be discharged according 

 to the sense of honor that may happen to be 

 entertained by the debtor. Indeed, we may go 

 through all the details of State policy, State 

 legislation, and individual rights, as regulated 

 by the constitutions of the States. Even fur- 

 ther than this, we may here in these chambers 

 draft and enact not only a constitution for the 

 .State which is contemplated to be admitted, 

 but we may exact an entire code of laws for 

 the State, and for all its citizens and all its in- 

 habitants, organizing its courts of justice, and 

 making provision for every exigency that arises 

 in society under a State constitution ; and we 

 can go so far as to declare, according to the ar- 

 gument of the honorable Senator from Ver- 

 mont, that the assent of the people of the Terri- 

 tory to this State constitution formed here, to this 

 code of laws formed here, shall be irrevocable, 

 without the consent of Congress. What, then, 

 becomes of State rights? Why, sir, it is merely 

 converting the Congress of the United States 



