The clauses mentioned, taken either separately or collectively, neither assert, imply, sanction, recognize nor acknowledge any such thing as slavery. They do not even speak of it. They make no allusion to it whatever. They do not suggest, and, of themselves, never would have suggested the idea of slavery. There is, in the whole instrument, no such word as slave or slavery; nor any language that can legally be made to assert or imply the existence of slavery. There is in it nothing about color; nothing from which a liability to slavery can be predicated of one person more than another; or from which such a liability can be predicated of any person whatever. The clauses, that have been claimed for slavery, are all, in themselves, honest in their language, honest in their legal meaning; and they can be made otherwise only by such gratuitous assumptions against natural right, and such straining of words in favor of the wrong, as, if applied to other clauses, would utterly destroy every principle of liberty and justice, and allow the whole instrument to be perverted to every conceivable purpose of tyranny and crime. Let us now look at the _positive_ provisions of the constitution, _in favor of liberty_, and see whether they are not only inconsistent with any legal sanction of slavery, but also whether they must not, of themselves, have necessarily extinguished slavery, if it had had any constitutional existence to be extinguished. And, first, the constitution made all "the people of the United States" _citizens_ under the government to be established by it; for all of those, by whose authority the constitution declares itself to be established, must of course be presumed to have been made citizens under it. And whether they were entitled or not to the right of suffrage, they were at least entitled to all the personal liberty and protection, which the constitution professes to secure to "the people" generally. Who, then, established the constitution? The preamble to the constitution has told us in the plainest possible terms, to wit, that "We, _the people_ of the United States" "do ordain and establish this constitution," &c. By "the people of the United States," here mentioned, the constitution intends _all_ "the people" then permanently inhabiting the United States. If it does not intend all, who were intended by "the people of the United States?"--The constitution itself gives no answer to such a question.--It does not declare that "we, the _white_ people," or "we, the _free_ people," or "we, a _part_ of the people"--but that "we, _the_ people"--that is, we the _whole_ people--of the United States, "do ordain and establish this constitution."