Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
Where it was deemed expedient particular rights of the States were
expressly guaranteed by the Constitution, but in all things besides these
rights were guarded by the limitation of the powers granted and by express
reservation of all powers not granted in the compact of union. Thus the
great power of taxation was limited to purposes of common defense and
general welfare, excluding objects appertaining to the local legislation of
the several States; and those purposes of general welfare and common
defense were afterwards defined by specific enumeration as being matters
only of co-relation between the States themselves or between them and
foreign governments, which, because of their common and general nature,
could not be left to the separate control of each State.
Of the circumstances of local condition, interest, and rights in which a
portion of the States, constituting one great section of the Union,
differed from the rest and from another section, the most important was the
peculiarity of a larger relative colored population in the Southern than in
the Northern States.
A population of this class, held in subjection, existed in nearly all the
States, but was more numerous and of more serious concernment in the South
than in the North on account of natural differences of climate and
production; and it was foreseen that, for the same reasons, while this
population would diminish and sooner or later cease to exist in some
States, it might increase in others. The peculiar character and magnitude
of this question of local rights, not in material relations only, but still
more in social ones, caused it to enter into the special stipulations of
the Constitution.
Hence, while the General Government, as well by the enumerated powers
granted to it as by those not enumerated, and therefore refused to it, was
forbidden to touch this matter in the sense of attack or offense, it was
placed under the general safeguard of the Union in the sense of defense
against either invasion or domestic violence, like all other local
interests of the several States. Each State expressly stipulated, as well
for itself as for each and all of its citizens, and every citizen of each
State became solemnly bound by his allegiance to the Constitution that any
person held to service or labor in one State, escaping into another, should
not, in consequence of any law or regulation thereof, be discharged from
such service or labor, but should be delivered up on claim of the party to
whom such service or labor might be due by the laws of his State.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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