Finally, these principles have been expressly decided by the highest constitutional authority in the land, as well as by the voice of the most enlightened founders of the government. When the mischievous contest concerning the admission of Missouri was rising in 1819, Mr. Madison declared, concerning the article of the constitution which conferred on Congress its powers over the territories, (Art. 4, § 3,) that "it cannot be well extended beyond a power over the territories _as property_, and the power to make provisions really needful or necessary for the government of settlers, until ripe for admission into the Union."[59] The Supreme Court of the United States, in the well-known case of Dred Scott, decided that Africans were not citizens of the United States in the meaning of the constitution;[60] that property in African slaves was on the same footing under that instrument with other legal property;[61] that the residence of a slave in a territory of the United States did not emancipate him, nor did his residence in a non-slaveholding State for a time, prevent the recurrence of his state of bondage, on his return to the State in which he had been a slave;[62] and that Congress had no power to use its authority to exclude slavery from any part of the territories.[63] [Footnote 59: Letter to Robert Walsh, Nov. 27, 1819.] [Footnote 60: 19th Howard, pp. 12, 33.] [Footnote 61: 19th Howard, p. 57.] [Footnote 62: Ibid., p. 38, 58.] [Footnote 63: 19th Howard, p. 58.] Thus the main proposition with which we set out is abundantly sustained by the history and legislation of the country. Three evasions from this conclusion have been attempted, of which the first is from the language of the Declaration of Independence, in which these famous words occur: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," etc. The inference is, that the Declaration intended to imply that the slavery of the Africans was a natural wrong incapable of being legalized; and it is claimed that this document is of the organic force of constitutional law to the confederation which then asserted its independence. Both these suppositions are erroneous. As to the latter, it may be justly argued, that the Declaration of Independence was simply what it calls itself: a _declaration_, a justificatory statement addressed to the world without, and not an act of organic legislation ascertaining the rights of the citizens within. The evidence is, that it _enacts nothing_ save the one point of the independence of the colonies. Neither the Confederation nor the new Union formed in 1787 ever based any legislation upon it, save as their acts involved the fact of independence. The constitution made no reference to it; did not ground itself upon it, and did not reënact it. Hence, let its meaning be what