Such are the views, Mr. Chairman, and such the example of our forefathers when they framed the Constitution. I take those examples of our forefathers, and their legislative action under it, for my precedents. I care not what their private opinions may have been; I want to know what their legislative conduct was when they were acting on oath, for they were men who regarded their oaths. They were men, sir, who did not believe that the Constitution they framed would be contrary to the higher law, and that it would be consistent with their oath of office to violate it. Well, Mr. Chairman, what further was the action of the fathers under the Constitution of the United States. I will refer back to one memorable example which goes behind that instrument. In the treaty with the British Government it was stipulated that the British should not carry away any negroes or _other property_ of the American citizens. John Jay, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin signed that treaty; and this, sir, was the language they used: The British "shall not carry away the negroes or other property belonging to the people of the United States." Yet we are told that, according to the doctrine of our forefathers, there can be no such thing as property in man. The language I have quoted occurs first in the preliminary articles in 1782, and again in the treaty of peace which was signed in 1783. Kentucky was admitted into the Union as a slave State, without objection, on the 4th of February, 1791. Now, if you had the right to exclude Missouri because she tolerated slavery, why did you not have the same right to exclude Kentucky? Why were conscientious scruples abandoned in the case of Kentucky, and the Territory of Virginia given, by the detaching of Kentucky, four Senators in the Senate of the United States, instead of two? Our forefathers--yours and mine--voted for the admission of Kentucky as a slave State. It will not do to say that slavery already existed in Kentucky; because, if slavery be a sin and a crime and a curse, then, according to your doctrine, it ought not to have been extended by giving the slave States additional representation and power in the Senate of the United States.