"_Resolved unanimously_, That the suspension of the said article
would be equally advantageous to the Territory, to the States
from whence the negroes would be brought, and to the negroes
themselves....
"The States which are overburdened with negroes would be
benefited by their citizens having an opportunity of disposing
of the negroes which they can not comfortably support, or of
removing with them to a country abounding with all the
necessaries of life; and the negro himself would exchange a
scanty pittance of the coarsest food for a plentiful and
nourishing diet, and a situation which admits not the most
distant prospect of emancipation for one which presents no
considerable obstacle to his wishes."
These resolutions were submitted to a committee drawn, like the former,
from different sections of the country, which again reported favorably,
reiterating in substance the reasons given by the former committee.
Their report was sustained by the House, and a resolution to suspend the
prohibitory article was adopted. The proposition failed, however, in the
Senate, and there the matter seems to have been dropped. The proceedings
constitute a significant and instructive episode in the political
history of the country.
The allusion which has been made to the Ordinance of 1787, renders it
proper to notice, very briefly, the argument put forward during the
discussion of the Missouri question, and often repeated since, that the
Ordinance afforded a precedent in support of the claim of a power in
Congress to determine the question of the admission of slaves into the
Territories, and in justification of the prohibitory clause applied in
1820 to a portion of the Louisiana Territory.
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