They should have them, but they should be
restricted to their own necessities. They have no right within their
municipal power to attempt to decide the rights of the people of the
States. They have no right to exclude any citizen of the United States
from owning and equally enjoying this common possession; it is for the
purpose of preserving order, and giving protection to rights of person
and property, that a municipal territorial government should be
instituted.
The last resolution refers to a law founded on a provision of the
Constitution, which contains an obligation of faith to every State of
the Union; and that obligation of faith has been violated by thirteen
States of the Confederacy--as many as originally fought the battles of
the Revolution and established the Confederation. Is it to be expected
that a compact thus broken in part, violated in its important features,
will be regarded as binding in all else? Is the free trade which the
North sought in the formation of the Union, and for which the States
generally agreed to give Congress the power to regulate commerce, to be
trampled under foot by laws of obstruction, not giving to the citizens
of the South that free transit across the territory of the Northern
States which we might claim from any friendly state under Christendom;
and is Congress to stand powerless by, on the doctrine of
non-intervention? We have a right to claim abstinence from interference
with our rights from any Government on the earth.
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