John A. Campbell

“ The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created are erased from the memory. ”

“ The clause which enables Congress to dispose of and make regulations respecting the public domain was demanded by the exigencies of an exhausted treasury and a disordered finance, for relief by sales, and the preparation for sales, of the public lands, and the last clause that nothing in the Constitution should prejudice the claims of the United States or a particular State was to quiet the jealousy and irritation of those who had claimed for the United States all the unappropriated lands. ”

“ The Constitution allows Congress to coin money, and regulate its value, to regulate foreign and Federal commerce, to secure, for a limited period, to authors and inventors a property in their writings and discoveries, and to make rules concerning captures in war, and, within the limits of these powers, it has exercised, rightly, to a greater or less extent, the power to determine what shall and what shall not be property. ”

“ A proscription, therefore, of the Constitution and laws of one or more States, determining property, on the part of the Federal Government, by which the stability of its social system may be endangered is plainly repugnant to the conditions on which the Federal Constitution was adopted, or which that Government was designed to accomplish. Each of the States surrendered its powers of war and negotiation, to raise armies and to support a navy, and all of these powers are sometimes required to preserve a State from disaster and ruin. ”

“ And it is a significant fact in the history of the United States that those controversies which have been productive of the greatest animosity, and have occasioned most peril to the peace of the Union, have had their origin in the well sustained opinion of a minority among the people that the Federal Government had overstepped its constitutional limits to grant some exclusive privilege, or to disturb the legitimate distribution of property or power among the States or individuals. ”

“ No candid or rational man can hesitate to believe that if the subject of the eighth section of the act of March, 1820, had never been introduced into Congress and made the basis of legislation, no interest common to the Union would have been seriously affected. And certainly the creation within this Union of large confederacies of unfriendly and frowning States, which has been the tendency and, to an alarming extent, the result produced by the agitation arising from it does not commend it to the patriot or statesman. ”

“ The most dangerous of the efforts to employ a geographical political power to perpetuate a geographical preponderance in the Union is to be found in the deliberations upon the act of the 6th of March, 1820, before cited. The attempt consisted of a proposal to exclude Missouri from a place in the Union unless her people would adopt a Constitution containing a prohibition upon the subject of slavery according to a prescription of Congress. The sentiment is now general, if not universal, that Congress had no constitutional power to impose the restriction. ”

“ These States, at the adoption of the Federal Constitution, were organized communities, having distinct systems of municipal law, which, though derived from a common source and recognising in the main similar principles, yet in some respects had become unlike, and, on a particular subject, promised to be antagonistic.
Their systems provided protection for life, liberty, and property among their citizens, and for the determination of the condition and capacity of the persons domiciled within their limits. ”

“ The result of these discussions is that, in general, the status or civil and political capacity of a person is determined in the first instance by the law of the domicil where he is born; that the legal effect on persons arising from the operation of the law of that domicil is not indelible, but that a new capacity or status may be acquired by a change of domicil. That questions of status are closely connected with considerations arising out of the social and political organization of the State where they originate, and each sovereign power must determine them within its own territories. ”

“ It comprehends all the public domain, wherever it may be. The argument is that [p510] the power to make "ALL needful rules and regulations" "is a power of legislation," "a full legislative power," "that it includes all subjects of legislation in the territory," and is without any limitations, except the positive prohibitions which affect all the powers of Congress. Congress may then regulate or prohibit slavery upon the public domain within the new States, and such a prohibition would permanently affect the capacity of a slave whose master might carry him to it. ”

“ The Ordinance of 1787 depended upon the action of the Congress of the Confederation, the assent of the State of Virginia, and the acquiescence of the people who recognised the validity of that plea of necessity which supported so many of the acts of the Governments of that time, and the Federal Government accepted the ordinance as a recognised and valid engagement of the Confederation. ”

“ In France, although there be some remembrance of old servitude, yet it is not lawful here to make a slave or to buy anyone of others, insomuch as the slaves of strangers, so soon as they set their foot within France, become frank and free, as was determined by an old decree of the court of Paris against an ambassador of Spain, who had brought a slave with him into France. ”

“ The compacts of cession by North Carolina and Georgia are subsequent to the Constitution. They adopt the Ordinance of 1787, except the clause respecting slavery. But the precautionary repudiation of that article forms an argument quite as satisfactory to the advocates for Federal power, as its introduction [p506] would have done. The refusal of a power to Congress to legislate in one place seems to justify the seizure of the same power when another place for its exercise is found. ”

“ My opinion in this case is not affected by the plea to the jurisdiction, and I shall not discuss the questions it suggests. The claim of the plaintiff to freedom depends upon the effect to be given to his absence from Missouri, in company with his master, in Illinois and Minnesota, and this effect is to be ascertained by a reference to the laws of Missouri. For the trespass complained of was committed upon one claiming to be a freeman and a citizen, in that State, and who had been living for years under the dominion of its laws. ”

“ The complaint here, in my opinion, amounts to this: that the judicial tribunals of Missouri have not denounced as odious the Constitution and laws under which they are organized, and have not superseded them on their own private authority for the purpose of applying the laws of Illinois, or those passed by Congress for Minnesota, in their stead. ”

“ The African slave trade had been carried on, under the unbounded protection of the Crown, for near two centuries when the case of Somersett was heard, and no motion for its suppression had ever been submitted to Parliament, while it was forced upon and maintained in unwilling colonies by the Parliament and Crown of England at that moment. ”

“ This must depend, for [p515] the most part, on political considerations, which cannot enter into the determination of a case of law or equity. I do not feel called upon to define the jurisdiction of Congress. It is sufficient for the decision of this case to ascertain whether the residuary sovereignty of the States or people has been invaded by the 8th section of the act of 6th March, 1820, I have cited, insofar as it concerns the capacity and status of persons in the condition and circumstances of the plaintiff and his family. ”

“ Historical research ascertains that, at the date of the Conquest, the rural population of England were generally in a servile condition, and under various names denoting noting slight variances in condition, they were sold with the land like cattle, and were a part of its living money. ”

“ But the more eminent men of Massachusetts rejected it, and another patriot of the time employs the instance to warn us of "the stealth with which oppression approaches," and "the enormities towards which precedents travel." ”

“ They are, respectively, the depositories of such powers of legislation as the people were willing to surrender, and their duty is to cooperate within their several jurisdictions to maintain the rights of the same citizens under both Governments unimpaired. ”