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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.
The free, or northern States, in the exercise of their admitted right in deciding upon the terms of Union, insisted on making it a fundamental and ever-binding condition that no obligation to protect slavery in Illinois should ever exist; and this was done for reasons which render it morally certain that they would have insisted on the same condition in reference to Missouri, if Missouri had been part of the original territory. It would be preposterous to suppose that while they would not consent to guarantee slavery in any manner in Illinois, because they believed it to be a moral and political evil, they meant at the same time to make a Government that could obligate them to guarantee it in the adjoining Territory or State of Missouri, either by the return of fugitive slaves, or in any other manner. They meant no such thing, nor can an honest interpretation of the terms of union bind them to such guarantee now. The right to recapture fugitive slaves could not exist without the consent of the free States; and as that consent was given upon conditions and with limitations, by necessary implication and every sound principle of construction, they reserved the right to say whether it should exist upon other conditions and with other limitations, or without either condition or limitation.
Mr. WICKLIFFE:--No one from Kentucky or Virginia wishes to alter the ordinance of 1787. For GOD'S sake spare us the argument.
Mr. GOODRICH:--I understand no alteration is proposed in the ordinance; nor am I arguing against any such proposition. I am showing what the policy of 1787 was, and what the compact of the fathers was. And I am doing this because it is in the spirit of that policy and compact that Kentucky and Virginia tell us they wish to have this controversy adjusted. Massachusetts and the other Northern States meant to fix, and supposed they had fixed, a limit to their connection with, and responsibility for slavery. By consenting to the clause which secured the right of reclamation, they did become responsible for it to a certain extent. So far as it was supposed, when that clause was agreed to, that its effect would be the recapture of fugitive slaves, and their return to bondage, and so far as the purpose was to make such recapture and return lawful, so far the responsibility of adding to the security of slavery was voluntarily assumed. But this was limited to the existing States by excluding slavery from all United States territory. If any part of such territory had been left for slavery--enough for a single slave State--it might be said that its extension from a part was for reasons applicable only to a part, and so could not be considered as establishing the principle of non-extension. But now this cannot be said. Not a foot was left for slavery.
We thus see what the state of things would have been to-day if foreign territory had not been acquired. Such acquisitions were not originally contemplated, and of course not provided for. The first--Louisiana--was deemed unconstitutional by Mr. JEFFERSON, and yet it was made while he was President; but with no right, "according to the spirit of the compact of the fathers," to place the Federal Government or the States under any other relation to slavery in subsequently acquired territory than that which they sustained to it--the only one they would consent to sustain--in the Territories possessed at the time that compact was made.