Such is the history of the case. The inference of the objector is, that because the Congress of 1789, acting under the late constitution, claimed power to execute the ordinance of 1787, (passed by the previous and different general government,) with its anti-slavery clause included, therefore that constitution gave it power to exclude slavery from any other territory. But the inference is worthless. For, first, the Congress of the old Confederation had not a particle of constitutional power to adopt such an anti-slavery clause. So declared Mr. Madison emphatically:[66] and so has decided the Supreme Court of the United States.[67] Both these high authorities declare, that if the clause had any validity, it derived it only from the assent of Virginia, who had full sovereignty over the territory, and who accepted and ratified the exclusion by act of her General Assembly, as well as by the mouths of her representatives in the Confederation. And the Congress of 1789, in accepting the conditions imposed by the Ordinance of 1787 on the territory, as valid and abiding, undertook to change nothing, because it regarded that validity as the result of treaty stipulations between Virginia and the other twelve States represented by the old Congress. It conceived itself as having inherited from a previous and different government powers over this particular territory, which it could by no means have originated by its own constitutional authority.[68] Second: The government framed under the new constitution was one of limited powers; and Congress was expressly inhibited, by the instrument which created it, from exercising any authority not granted. But such a power as that to exclude citizens of any of the United States from the common territory, because they proposed to carry there property legalized both by the Constitution of the United States and of their own State, was not granted to Congress. That a government whose very foundation was the equality of the States, should thus attempt to disfranchise some States of a part of their rights, was a solecism too monstrous for these able and enlightened men. Third: When similar cessions of territory were afterwards made by North Carolina and Georgia, these States refused to Congress the privilege of appending to their laws touching these lands, the exclusion of slavery; and Congress obeyed, so framing their enactments as to admit and protect slave-owners. This proves that the exclusion derived its force from the consent of the Sovereign State, and not from the power of Congress. [Footnote 66: Federalist, No. 38. Letter to Walsh, 1819.] [Footnote 67: 19th Howard, pp. 40, 41.] [Footnote 68: 19th Howard, pp. 44, 45.]