The Constitution of the United States left slavery in the states precisely where it was before, the only provision having any reference to it whatever being that which fixed the ratio of representation in the House of Representatives and direct taxation; that in reference to the foreign slave trade, and that guaranteeing the return of fugitive slaves. Had it been proposed to insert any provision giving Congress any power over the subject in the states, it would have been resisted, and the insertion of such provision would have insured the rejection of the Constitution. The government framed under this Constitution being one of delegated powers entirely, those powers were necessarily limited to the objects for which they were granted, but to prevent all misconception, the 9th and 10th amendments were adopted, the first providing that "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people," and the other that: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." * * * * * It has now been shown how slavery originated in the United States and that the Federal Constitution left its regulation in every particular, where it belonged, that is to the several states where it existed, save only in regard to the foreign slave trade and the guarantee for the return of fugitive slaves as mentioned. State action had already provided for the removal of slavery from several of the northern states, and this was followed, later, by a law adopted in New York in 1799, providing that all children of slaves born after the 4th of July of that year should be free, males at 28 and females at 25 years of age, and a law adopted in New Jersey in 1804, providing that all children of slaves born after the 4th of July of that year should be free, the males at 25 and the females at 21 years of age. This was the last of the acts for the emancipation of slavery where it previously existed and therefore, so far as regarded the original thirteen states, slavery was confined to Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia, except as to the remnants left in the other states by the acts for gradual emancipation, which lingered in some of them for a long time. If African slavery was a crime, who was responsible for it? Did the sole guilt or the greater part of it rest upon the shoulders of the colonists who purchased the slaves already ravished from their homes in the plains and wilds of Africa, or on the shoulders of the descendants of the original purchasers who found the institution already established as a settled policy, or did it rest with those who procured the enslavement of these ignorant and degraded barbarians and reaped the enormous profits resulting from their sale in their persons?