"Slavery In the Territories" Speech in the Senate, Feb. 23, 1859, On the Question of Slavery In The Territories"
[Mr. Wade. I understand the senator to contend, that inasmuch as a slave is property in a territory, the owner has a right to be protected in the territory. He says he derives that right from the Constitution of the United States, and the decision of the Supreme Court under that Constitution. That I understand to be the claim. If so, I ask why it does not apply as well to a state as to a territory? What is there in the Constitution, if it is the supreme law of the land, that prevents its operating in a state to the same extent as in a territory?
Mr. Brown. I hold, Mr. President, that each state is sovereign within its own limits; and that each for itself can establish or abolish slavery for itself.
Mr. Wade. Do I understand the senator that state sovereignty dominates over the Constitution of the United States, in any instance, or can do so?
Mr. Brown. If the Constitution, in terms, guarantied slavery in the states; in other words, if the states had surrendered to the federal government the power to maintain slavery within their respective limits, then, as a matter of course, the obligation would have been upon Congress to do it; but the extent of the guarantee is not that.]
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"New states, asking admission into the Union, are to he introduced upon terms of equality with the original states. Congress must take care that they have a republican form of government, and that their constitutions do not conflict with that of the United States; and here the power to direct and control them ceases. No other and extraordinary conditions are to be imposed upon them. Each state, for herself, as she enters the Union, must decide whether she will take her position with the free or slave states of the Union." Last Annual Message As Governor of Mississippi, January 3, 1848.
Speeches, messages, and other writings of the Hon. Albert G. Brown