The Louisiana Purchase was much greater, territorially speaking, than all the States then in the Union, with all its other possessions.(35) It comprised what are now the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, nearly all of Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, large parts of Colorado and the Indian Territory, and a portion of Idaho. These States and Territories in 1890 contained 11,804,101 inhabitants. At the time of this great acquisition a conviction prevailed that slavery was rapidly diminishing. Adams and Jefferson, each, while President, entertained the belief that slavery would, ere long, come to a peaceful end. It might then have been possible, by law of Congress, to devote this new region to freedom, but, as slavery existed at and around New Orleans in 1812 when the State of Louisiana was admitted into the Union, it became a slave State. This fate was largely due to the claim of its original inhabitants that they were secured the right to hold slaves by the treaty of cession from France. Later on, the provision of this treaty, under which it was claimed slavery was perpetuated, was a subject of much discussion, and on it was founded the most absurd arguments on behalf of the slave power. Its third article was the sole one referred to as fastening forever the institution of slavery on the inhabitants of this vast empire. There are those yet living who deny that, even under the present Constitution of the United States or the constitutions of the States since erected therein, slavery is _lawfully_ excluded therefrom. This article reads: "The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the enjoyment of their liberty, _property_, and the religion they profess." Justice Catron, of the United States Supreme Court, speaking in the Dred Scott case, for the majority of the court and of this article, says: "Louisiana was a province where slavery was not only lawful, but where property in slaves was the most valuable of all personal property. The province was ceded as a _unit_, with an equal right pertaining to all its inhabitants, in every part thereof, to own slaves." He and others of the concurring justices held that the inhabitants at the time of the purchase, also all immigrants after the cession, were protected in the right to hold slaves in the entire purchase. Near the close of his opinion, still speaking of this article and the acquired territory, he says: "The right of the United States in or over it depends on the contract of cession, which operates to incorporate as well the Territory as its inhabitants into the Union.