This question is, in reality, answered in the negative by what has already been shown; for if slavery had no constitutional existence, under the state constitutions, prior to the adoption of the constitution of the United States, then it is absolutely certain that the constitution of the United States did _not_ recognize it as a constitutional institution; for it cannot, of course, be pretended that the United States constitution recognized, as constitutional, any state institution that did not constitutionally exist. Even if the constitution of the United States had _intended_ to recognize slavery, as a constitutional _state_ institution, such intended recognition would have failed of effect, and been legally void, because slavery then had no constitutional existence to be recognized. Suppose, for an illustration of this principle, that the constitution of the United States had, by implication, plainly taken it for granted that the state legislatures had power--derived from the _state_ constitutions--to order arbitrarily that infant children, or that men without the charge of crime, should be maimed--deprived, for instance, of a hand, a foot, or an eye. This intended recognition, on the part of the constitution of the United States, of the legality of such a practice, would obviously have failed of all legal effect--would have been mere surplussage--if it should appear, from an examination of the state constitutions themselves, that they had really conferred no such power upon the legislatures. And this principle applies with the same force to laws that would arbitrarily make men or children slaves, as to laws that should arbitrarily order them to be maimed or murdered. We might here safely rest the whole question--for no one, as has already been said, pretends that the constitution of the United States, by its own authority, created or authorized slavery as a new institution; but only that it intended to recognize it as one already established by authority of the state constitutions. This intended recognition--if there were any such--being founded on an error as to what the state constitutions really did authorize, necessarily falls to the ground, a defunct intention. We make a stand, then, at this point, and insist that the main question--the only material question--is already decided against slavery; and that it is of no consequence what recognition or sanction the constitution of the United States may have intended to extend to it.