Our courts would want no other authority than this truth, thus acknowledged, for setting at liberty any individual, other than one having negro blood, whom our governments, state or national, should assume to authorize another individual to enslave. Why, then, do they not apply the same law in behalf of the African? Certainly not because it is not as much the law of his case, as of others. _But it is simply because they will not._ It is because the courts are parties to an understanding, prevailing among the white race, but expressed in no authentic constitutional form, that the negro may be deprived of his rights at the pleasure of avarice and power. And they carry out this unexpressed understanding in defiance of, and suffer it to prevail over, all our constitutional principles of government--all our authentic, avowed, open and fundamental law. CHAPTER VI. THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS OF 1789. Of all the state constitutions, that were in force at the adoption of the constitution of the United States, in 1789, _not one of them established, or recognized slavery_. All those parts of the state constitutions, (i.e. of the old thirteen states,) that recognize and attempt to sanction slavery, _have been inserted, by amendments, since the adoption of the constitution of the United States_. All the states, except Rhode-Island and Connecticut, formed constitutions prior to 1789. Those two states went on, beyond this period, under their old charters.[14] The eleven constitutions formed, were all democratic in their general character. The most of them eminently so. They generally recognized, in some form or other, the natural rights of men, as one of the fundamental principles of the government. Several of them asserted these rights in the most emphatic and authoritative manner. Most or all of them had also specific provisions incompatible with slavery. Not one of them had any specific recognition of the existence of slavery. Not one of them granted any specific authority for its continuance. The only provisions or words in any of them, that could be claimed by any body as recognitions of slavery, are the following, viz. 1. The use of the words "our negroes" in the preamble to the constitution of Virginia. 2. The mention of "slaves" in the preamble to the constitution of Pennsylvania. 3. The provisions, in some of the constitutions, for continuing in force the laws that had previously been "in force" in the colonies, except when altered by, or incompatible with the new constitution. 4. The use, in several of the constitutions, of the words "free" and "freemen." As each of these terms and clauses may be claimed by some persons as recognitions of slavery, they are worthy of particular notice.