The states which had thought proper to abolish or exclude slavery because it was not to their interests to have it, had no right to complain of its existence in other states. If they did not desire to be allied to states which tolerated slavery, then they should have refused to ratify the Constitution. Having ratified it, the faith of those states became pledged by every consideration that can bind states as communities, or men as individuals, to respect the institutions, rights and property of the other states and to faithfully abide by all of the compromises and guaranties of the Constitution. They were bound to respect and abide by them not only in the capacity of states, but they were bound by the exercise of their just powers of legislation and restraint, to compel their citizens to respect and abide by them. This obligation extended not merely to abstaining from all violent interference and active measures of wrong, but from all agitation or incitement to others to do wrong, by disturbing the peace, property or rights of other states and the citizens thereof. The Constitution did not make the general government censors over the morals or domestic institutions of the several states, nor did it make the states or the citizens thereof censors of the moral or domestic institutions of each other. It was merely a compact formed between sovereign states for the common defence and protection of each other in their rights and liberties, as they existed before its formation. CHAPTER IV =Causes Leading to Secession--Secession of the Cotton States= Very shortly after the organization of the government under the new Constitution, petitions upon the subject of the slave trade began to be presented to Congress, mostly from the Quakers of Pennsylvania, that "non-resisting" sect "conscientiously opposed to all war." Some of the petitions were very inflammatory in their character, and caused much excited debate in the early Congresses, and one presented by Warren Mifflin, a Quaker of Delaware, urging the injustice of slavery and the necessity for its abolition, was returned to him by order of the House at the second session of the second Congress on account of its incendiary and mischievous character. In January, 1805, the first proposition for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia was made. It was made by Sloan, a democratic representative from New Jersey, and was "that all children born after the ensuing 4th of July should be free at certain ages," but it was refused a reference to a committee and was then rejected by a vote of 77 to 31. It is a little remarkable in view of subsequent events that 26 of the 31 were Northern Democrats, and that only 5 constituting the remainder of the vote for the proposition were Northern Federalists.