Excerpt from Report of the Committee on Territories, to Whom Was Referred So Much of the Annual Message of the President of the Unites States as Relates to Territorial Affairs: Together With His Special Message of the 24th Day of January, 1856, in Regard to Kansas Territory African slavery existed in all the colonies, under the sanction of the British government, prior to the Declaration of Independence. When the constitution of the United States was adopted, it became the supreme law and bond of union between twelve slave-holding States and one non-slave-holding State. Each State reserved the right to decide the question of slavery for itself - to continue it as a domestic institution so long as it pleased, and to abolish it when it chose. In pursuance of this reserved right, six of the original slave - holding States have since abolished and prohibited slavery within their limits respectively, without consulting Congress or their sister States, while the other six have retained and sustained it as a domestic institution, which, in their opinion, had become so firmly engrafted on their social systems, that the relation between the master and slave could not be dissolved with safety to either. In the meantime, eighteen new States have been admitted into the Union, in obedience to the federal constitution, on an equal footing with the original States, in cluding, of course, the right of each to decide the question of slavery for itself. In deciding this question, it has so happened that nine of these new States have abolished and prohibited slavery, while the other nine have retained and regulated it. That these new States had at the time of their admission, and still retain, an equal right, under the federal constitution, with the original States, to decide all questions of domestic policy for themselves, including that of African slavery, ought not to be seriously questioned, and certainly cannot be success fully controverted. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.