first consul, among those brilliant achievements which proved him the first statesman, as well as the first captain of Europe, sagaciously sold the whole of these possessions to the United States, for a liberal sum, and thus replenished his treasury, while he saved from his enemies, and transferred to a friendly power, distant and vast regions which, for want of adequate naval force, he was unable to defend.

This purchase of Louisiana from France by the United States, involved a grave dispute concerning the western limits of that province; and that controversy, having remained open until 1819, was then adjusted by a treaty, in which they relinquished Texas to Spain, and accepted a cession of the early discovered and long inhabited provinces of East Florida and West Florida. The United States stipulated, in each of these cases, to admit the countries thus annexed into the Federal Union.

The acquisitions of Oregon, by discovery and occupation, of Texas, by voluntary annexation, and of New Mexico and Califorma, including what is now called Utah, by war, completed the rapid course of enlargement, at the close of which our frontier has been fixed near the center of what was New Spain, on the Atlantic side of the continent, while on the west, as on the east, only an ocean separates us from the nations of the old world. It is not in my way now to speculate on the question, how long we are to rest on these advanced positions.

Slavery, before the revolution, existed in all the thirteen colonies, as it did also in nearly all the other European plantations in America. But it had been forced by British authority, for political and commercial ends, on the American people, against their own sagacious instincts of policy, and their strongest feelings of justice and humanity.

They had protested and remonstrated against the system earnestly, for forty years, and they ceased to protest and remonstrate against it only when they finally committed their entire cause of complaint to the arbitrament of arms. An earnest spirit of emancipation was abroad in the colonies at the close of the revolution, and all of them, except perhaps South Carolina and Georgia, anticipated, desired and designed an early removal of the system from the coun try. The suppression of the African slave trade, which was universally regarded as ancillary to that great measure, was, with much reluctance, postponed until 1808.

While there was no national power, and no claim or desire for national power, anywhere, to compel involuntary emancipation in the state where slavery existed, there was at the same time a very general desire and a strong purpose to prevent its introduction into new communities, yet to be formed, and into new states yet to be established. Mr. Jefferson proposed, as early as 1784, to exclude it from the national domain-which should be constituted by cessions from the states to the United States. He recommended and urged the measure as ancillary, also, to the ultimate policy of emancipation. There seems to have been at first no very deep jealousy between the emancipating and the non-emancipating states; and the policy of admitting new states was not disturbed by questions concerning slavery. Vermont, a non-slaveholding state, was admitted in 1793. Kentucky, a tramontane slaveholding community, having been detached from Virginia, was admitted, without being questioned, about the same time. So, also, Tennessee, which was a similar community separated from North Carolina, was admitted in 1796, with a stipulation that the ordinance which Mr. Jefferson had first proposed, and which had in the meantime been adopted for the territory northwest of the Ohio, should not be held to apply within her limits. The same course was adopted in organizing territorial governments for Mississippi and Alabama, slaveholding communities which had been detached from South Carolina and Georgia. All these states and territories were situated southwest of the Ohio river, all were more or less already peopled by slaveholders with their slaves; and to have excluded slavery within their limits would have been a national act, not of preventing the introduction of slavery, but of abolishing slavery. In short, the region southwest of the Ohio river presented a field in which the policy of preventing the introduction of slavery was impracticable. Our forefathers never attempted what was impracticable.

But the case was otherwise in that fair and broad region which stretched away from the banks of the Ohio, northward to the lakes, and westward to the Mississippi. It was yet free, or practically free, from the presence of slaves, and was nearly uninhabited, and quite unoccupied. There was then no Baltimore and Ohio railroad, no Erie railroad, no New York Central railroad, no Boston and Ogdens burgh railroad; there was no railroad through Canada; nor, indeed, any road around or across the mountains; no imperial Erie canal,

no Welland canal, no lockage around the rapids and the falls of the St. Lawrence, the Mohawk and the Niagara rivers, and no steun navigation on the lakes, or on the Hudson, or on the Mississippi. There, in that remote and secluded region, the prevention of the introduction of slavery was possible; and there our forefathers, who left no possible national good unattempted, did prevent it. It makes one's heart bound with joy and gratitude, and lift itself up with mingled pride and veneration, to read the history of that great transaction. Discarding the trite and common forms of expressing the national will, they did not merely "vote," or "resolve," or "enact," as on other occasions, but they "ORDAINED," in language marked at once with precision, amplification, solemnity and emphasis, that there "shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." And they further ORDAINED and declared that this law should be considered a cOMPACT between the original states and the people and states of said territory, and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent. The ordinance was agreed to unanimously. Virginia, in reäffirming her cession of the territory, ratified it, and the first congress held under the constitution solemnly renewed and confirmed it.

In pursuance of this ordinance, the several territorial governments successively established in the northwest territory, were organized with a prohibition of the introduction of slavery, and in due time, though at successive periods, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, states erected within that territory, have come into the Union with constitutions in their hands forever prohibiting slavery. and involuntary servitude, except for the punishment of crime. They are yet young; but, nevertheless, who has ever seen elsewhere such states as they are? There are gathered the young, the vigor ous, the active, the enlightened sons of every state, the flower and choice of every state in this broad Union; and there the emigrant, for conscience sake, and for freedom's sake, from every land in Europe, from proud and all-conquering Britain, from heart-broken Ireland, from sunny Italy, from mercurial France, from spiritual Germany, from chivalrous Hungary, and from honest and brave old Sweden and Norway. Thence are already coming ample supplies of corn and wheat and wine for the manufacturers of the east, for the planters of the tropics, and even for the artisans and the armies

of Europe; and thence will continue to come in long succession, as they have already begun to come, statesmen and legislators for this continent.

Thus it appears, Mr. President, that it was the policy of our fathers, in regard to the original domain of the United States, to prevent the introduction of slavery, wherever it was practicable. This policy encountered greater difficulties when it came under consideration with a view to its establishment in regions not included within our original domain. While slavery had been actually abolished already, by some of the emancipating states, several of them, owing to a great change in the relative value of the productions of slave labor, had fallen off into the class of non-emancipating states; and now the whole family of states was divided and classified as slaveholding or slave states, and non-slaveholding or free states. A rivalry for political ascendency was soon developed; and besides the motives of interest and philanthropy which had before existed, there was now on each side a desire to increase, from among the candidates for admission into the Union, the number of states in their respective classes, and so their relative weight and influence in the federal councils.

The country which had been acquired from France was, in 1804, organized in two territories, one of which, including New Orleans as its capital, was called Orleans, and the other, having St. Louis for its chief town, was called Louisiana. In 1812, the territory of 'Orleans was admitted as a new state, under the name of Louisiana. It had been an old slaveholding colony of France, and the preven tion of slavery within it would have been a simple act of abolition. At the same time, the territory of Louisiana, by authority of congress, took the name of Missouri; and, in 1819, the portion thereof which now constitutes the state of Arkansas was detached, and became a territory, under that name. In 1819, Missouri, which was then but thinly peopled, and had an inconsiderable number of slaves, applied for admission into the Union, and her application brought the question of extending the policy of the ordinance of 1787 to that state, and to other new states in the region acquired from France, to a direct issue. The house of representatives insisted on a prohibition against the further introduction of slavery in the state, as a condition of her admission. The senate disagreed with the house in that demand. The non-slaveholding states sustained the

house, and the slaveholding states sustained the senate. The difference was radical, and tended toward revolution.

One party maintained that the condition demanded was constitu tional, the other that it was unconstitutional. The public mind became intensely excited, and painful apprehensions of disunion and civil war began to prevail in the country.

In this crisis, a majority of both houses agreed upon a plan for the adjustment of the controversy. By this plan, Maine, a nonslaveholding state, was to be admitted; Missouri was to be admitted without submitting to the condition before mentioned; and in all that part of the territory acquired from France, which was north of the line of 36° 30′ of north latitude, slavery was to be forever prohibited. Louisiana, which was a part of that territory, had been admitted as a slave state eight years before; and now, not only was Missouri to be admitted as a slave state, but Arkansas, which was south of that line, by strong implication, was also to be admitted as a slaveholding state. I need not indicate what were the equivalents which the respective parties were to receive in this arrangement, further than to say that the slaveholding states practically were to receive slaveholding states, the free states to receive a desert, a soli tude, in which they might, if they could, plant the germs of future free states. This measure was adopted. It was a great national transaction-the first of a class of transactions which have since come to be thoroughly defined and well understood, under the name of compromises. My own opinions concerning them are well known, and are not in question here. According to the general understanding, they are marked by peculiar circumstances and features, viz.:

First, there is a division of opinion upon some vital national question between the two houses of congress, which division is irreconcilable, except by mutual concessions of interests and opinions, which the houses deem constitutional and just.

Secondly, they are rendered necessary by impending calamities, to result from the failure of legislation, and to be no otherwise averted than by such mutual concessions, or sacrifices.

Thirdly, such concessions are mutual and equal, or are accepted as such, and so become conditions of the mutual arrangement.

Fourthly, by this mutual exchange of conditions, the transaction takes on the nature and character of a contract, compact, or treaty, between the parties represented; and so, according to well-settled