HKB
a United States Senator from South Carolina, said in the Senate in 1850, that he "remembered the time when slavery was regarded as a moral evil, even in South Carolina."
In such a state of public sentiment, it is certainly no marvel that slavery was not allowed to extend into the Territories and new States. It was not prohibited in the northwest territory, because it was supposed to be, or would become, an evil in that territory particularly, or a greater evil there than anywhere else; but because it was regarded as an evil everywhere, and therefore wrong to permit its extension anywhere, when there was power to prevent it. There can be no doubt it would have been prohibited in the Territories and new States of Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, if Georgia and North Carolina, previous to the Federal Convention, had ceded them to the United States upon the same conditions Virginia had ceded the northwest territory. Proof of this is found in the fact that the plan of territorial governments interdicting slavery forever after 1800, embraced all territory ceded, or to be ceded by individual States; and still further proof is in the fact, that the cessions by Georgia and North Carolina, after the adoption of the Constitution, were upon the express condition that slavery should not be prohibited; thereby showing that the policy of the Federal Government, as they understood it, was restrictive of slavery in the far southern latitudes as well as in the more northern, and that they expected the power to restrict would be exercised, if not withheld in the deeds of cession. A proposition was, in fact, made to apply the anti-slavery clause of 1787, to all the southern part of the Mississippi territory, now the southern parts of Alabama and Mississippi, by the act of April 7th, 1798, it being supposed at one time that it belonged to the United States; but the debate shows that the proposition was withdrawn because the jurisdiction was in Georgia, or because not five members of Congress, after the question was examined, believed otherwise. Georgia claimed absolute title and right of jurisdiction, and denied all right on the part of the United States to interfere with slavery. Congress did, however, prohibit the importation of slaves into the territory, and declare every slave so imported to be entitled to his freedom. This was probably wholly unauthorized, as it was six years before Georgia ceded it to the United States, and ten years before Congress had power to prohibit the importation of slaves into that State. But these facts show a strong disposition on the part of "the fathers" to curtail and circumscribe slavery, even in the far south, and at the hazard, too, of exercising doubtful power.
Nothing can be clearer than that the original States had a right to form a Federal Government on such terms as to themselves as they could mutually agree upon, and to fix the terms upon which they would permit new members to be admitted. The Northern States were under no obligation to protect slavery at all, not even by permitting fugitives to be reclaimed within their limits. If, then, they were willing to concede that right to the original States, only upon condition that slavery should not be allowed to extend, who will say they had not a right to make that condition, or that, if agreed to, it would not be valid and binding? With their views of slavery, believing it to be a moral and political evil, it was certainly their first and highest duty to make effectual provision against its extension, before undertaking, for any reason, to give the least protection to it. Such provision they supposed they had made, and it was this that justified them, if any thing could, in conceding the right of reclamation.