[Sidenote: The precedents cited in support of the Tallmadge amendment.] They pointed to the precedents of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, upon all of which Congress had imposed, as a {69} condition of their assumption of Commonwealth powers and government as "States of the Union," the requirement that their constitutions should not be repugnant to the "Ordinance of the Northwest Territory of 1787," the sixth article of which provided that there should be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a criminal penalty, in the Territory, from which these Commonwealths were carved out. They contended that Congress thus prohibited slavery in these new Commonwealths as the condition of its assent to their assumption of the status of Commonwealths of the Union and of their continued existence with that status. They further pointed to the precedent of Louisiana, upon whose "admission into the Union as a State," Congress imposed the conditions that the new Commonwealth should use the English language as its official language, should guarantee the writ of _habeas corpus_ and trial by jury in all criminal cases, and should incorporate in its organic law the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty. [Sidenote: Argument for the amendment from the duty of the United States to guarantee a republican form of government to every Commonwealth.] They went so far as to assert that the Constitution not only permitted Congress to lay the prohibition of slavery upon every new Commonwealth which it might "admit into the Union," but obligated Congress to do so by the constitutional provision which makes it the duty of the United States Government to guarantee a republican form of government to every Commonwealth of the Union. That is, they claimed that slavery was incompatible with the republican form of government, and that Congress was therefore bound by the Constitution to prohibit slavery whenever called upon to act in regard to it. [Sidenote: Argument from morals and policy.] Having thus, from their point of view, vindicated the {70} constitutional power and duty of Congress to enact the restriction, they claimed the personal liberty of every human being to be a self-evident principle of ethics, specifically recognized in the Declaration of Independence, and therefore a principle of the political system of the United States. And, finally, they demonstrated the ruinous policy of the system of slave labor in the economy of the country. There is no question that Mr. Tallmadge and his friends had taken strong ground, and that it would require extraordinary efforts to dislodge them. [Sidenote: Replies to the arguments of the restrictionists.]