With respect to the first, the amendment provided that in all the
territories north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes, slavery should be
forever prohibited, and in all the territory south of that line, slavery
was to be permitted; any territory, however, south of that line to have
the privilege to permit or deny slavery by its constitution adopted
preliminary to its admission as a state into the Union.
The amendment also provided that no territory should thereafter be
acquired by the United States except for naval and other like depots,
without the concurrence of a majority of the Senators from the states
which "allowed involuntary servitude and a majority of the Senators from
the states which prohibited that relation."
The amendment further provided that Congress should never have the power
to abolish slavery in the states where it existed, nor in the District
of Columbia without the consent of Maryland and Virginia. The slave
trade in the District of Columbia and the foreign slave trade were
forever prohibited, as was also the custom of bringing slaves into the
District of Columbia for the purpose of their sale or distribution to
other parts of the country. Congress should provide for the payment to
the owner for any fugitive slave whose return was prevented by mobs or
intimidation, after his arrest; and the elective franchise and the right
to hold office were not to be accorded persons of the African race.[382]
While no final action had been taken upon this report, with the
accompanying amendment, by the Convention at the time of Virginia's
secession, yet the votes taken in the Committee of the Whole on the
various paragraphs of the report indicated that had not Virginia's
secession been precipitated, the report would have been adopted by the
body in substantially the form in which it came from the Committee on
Federal Relations.