This sprang from that
unfortunate source of discord--negro slavery. When our Federal
Constitution was adopted, we owned no territory beyond the limits or
ownership of the States, except the territory northwest of the River Ohio
and east of the Mississippi. What has since been formed into the States
of Maine, Kentucky and Tennessee, was, I believe, within the limits of or
owned by Massachusetts, Virginia, and North Carolina. As to the
Northwestern Territory, provision had been made even before the adoption
of the Constitution that slavery should never go there. On the admission
of States into the Union, carved from the territory we owned before the
Constitution, no question, or at most no considerable question, arose
about slavery--those which were within the limits of or owned by the old
States following respectively the condition of the parent State, and
those within the Northwest Territory following the previously made
provision. But in 1803 we purchased Louisiana of the French, and it
included with much more what has since been formed into the State of
Missouri. With regard to it, nothing had been done to forestall the
question of slavery. When, therefore, in 1819, Missouri, having formed a
State constitution without excluding slavery, and with slavery already
actually existing within its limits, knocked at the door of the Union for
admission, almost the entire representation of the non-slaveholding
States objected.
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