The equality of the sovereign States which compose the American
Republic, and the equality of the citizens, both in the States and the
Territories, constitute the true and only bond of union for the
American people. This equality is the foundation stone upon which our
whole social and political superstructure rests. To call this in
question is to menace the very existence of the Union which is founded
upon it. The sovereignty of the Union, extending over the Territories,
where no other sovereignty exists, is the panoply of protection to all
the inhabitants of the Territories. There they are all equal in person
and property. There they are not sovereign, but subjects under the
sovereignty of the united confederacy of States, which have no
individual superiority and right in the Territories, neither for
themselves, nor their citizens. For the inhabitants of such
Territories to _assume_ a sovereignty therein, not in accordance with
the Constitution of the United States, not in conformity to law, and
in violation of the equality of the people of the States there
congregated, is USURPATION. Nor can the democracy of numbers, nor the
will of the majority of inhabitants congregated in such Territories be
invoked to decide the rights of the people of the several States
congregated in such Territories, either as to persons or property;
because the sovereignty of the Union holds, until superseded by the
sovereignty of a State constitutionally organized, deriving its
sovereignty from the supreme authority of the confederated States, by
whose assent alone the primordial sovereignty of the Union is so far
abandoned as to admit the exercise of State sovereignty in such
Territories. There would be no propriety nor justice in allowing an
_hypothetical sovereignty_ to a few thousands of individuals
congregated in a large Territory, not one fiftieth part of which they
occupied; allowing them to establish a rule of exclusion of the
persons or property of the people of a portion of the States coming to
settle in the Territories. Such persons have neither the right to
decide for the present, nor the future; because at present they are
not sovereign, and certainly they should not be allowed to exercise a
_usurped_ authority over the millions who shall occupy those
Territories in the future. It is a morbid desire to forestall the
future, in its judgment of barbarism, and of its fitness to subserve
civilization, that creates the present animosity between the citizens
of the different sections of the Union, going into the Territories.
This is all wrong. The sovereignty of the Union is the present, and
the sovereignty of States the future arbiter of the rights of the
people in the Territories; all other power is assumed, arbitrary,
gratuitous, and in violation of legitimate, delegated constitutional
power.
The wisdom of the sages who founded the American Union left nothing
for experiment to their successors, so far as the absolute equality of
American citizens is concerned; and there is no safety but in the
recognition of that perfect equality which the spirit of our race
demands, and which the power of the civilized world will be invoked to
maintain.