order that we may come to a right decision respecting the duties that grow out of our Federal Union, to consider what language the Constitution makes use of, in relation to slavery, and how was this instrument interpreted by the framers. The great question is, was slavery regarded as a political and moral evil, to be restricted and circumscribed within the States existing under the Constitution, or was it looked upon as a blessing, a social relation of society, proper to be diffused over the territories? It can be clearly shown that there was no such state of feeling, respecting slavery, as to lead the originators of our Constitution to look upon it as a thing in itself of natural right, useful in its operation, and worthy of enlargement and perpetuation. Rather, the universal sentiment respecting slavery, North and South, was, that as a great moral, social, and political evil, it should be condemned, and the widely prevalent impression was, that through the peaceful operation of causes that evinced the immeasurable superiority of free institutions, slavery would itself die out, and the whole country be consecrated to free labor. Never did it enter the minds of the framers of the Constitution, that slavery was a thing in itself right and desirable, or that it should be encouraged in the territories. It was looked upon as exclusively local in its character, the creature of State law, a relation of society that was to be regulated like any other municipal institution. It is not to be presumed that the authors of our government would, in the Declaration of Independence, assert the natural rights of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and then contradict this cardinal principle of the revolution in the Constitution. They found slavery existing in the Southern States; they simply left it as it was before the Revolution, with the idea that in time the local action of the State legislature would do away with the system. But so far as the extension of slavery was concerned, the predominant feeling, North and South, was hostile to it. The security of the country demanded the union of the States under one common Constitution. The dangers of foreign war, the exhausted finances of the different States, the evils of a great public debt, contracted during the Revolution, made it advisable, as soon as the consent of the States could be got, to have a Constitution that should command security at home and credit and respect abroad. It was regarded as indispensable for union, that slavery should be left as it was found in the States. The thirteen States that first formed our Union under the Constitution, with the great evils that grew out of war and debt, agreed, for their own mutual protection, that slavery should be permitted to exist in those States where it was sanctioned by the local government, as an evil to be tolerated, not as a thing good in itself, to be fostered, perpetuated, and enlarged.