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Indeed, when we look to the condition of this race in the several States at the time, it is
impossible to believe that these rights and privileges were intended to be extended to them.
It is very true, that in that portion of the Union where the labor of the negro race was
found to be unsuited to the climate, and unprofitable to the master, but few slaves were held at
the time of the Declaration of Independence; and when the Constitution was adopted, it had
entirely worn out in one of them, and measures had been taken for its gradual abolition in several
others. But this change had not been produced by any change of opinion in relation to this race;
but because it was discovered, from experience, that slave labor was unsuited to the climate and
productions of these States; for some of the States, where it had ceased or nearly ceased to exist,
were actively engaged in the slave trade, procuring cargoes on the coast of Africa, and
transporting them for sale to those parts of the Union where their labor was found to be
profitable, and suited to the climate and productions. And this traffic was openly carried on, and
fortunes accumulated by it, without reproach from the people of the States where they resided.
And it can hardly be supposed that, in the States where it was then countenanced in its worst
form—that is, in the seizure and transportation—the people could have regarded those who were
emancipated as entitled to equal rights with themselves.
And we may here again refer, in support of this proposition, to the plain and unequivocal
language of the laws of the several States, some passed after the Declaration of Independence and
before the Constitution was adopted and some since the government went into operation.
We need not refer, on this point, particularly to the laws of the present slaveholding
States. Their statute books are full of provisions in relation to this class, in the same spirit with
the Maryland law which we have before quoted. They have continued to treat them as an inferior
class, and to subject them to strict police regulation, drawing a broad line of distinction between
the citizen and the slave races, and legislating in relation to them upon the same principle which
prevailed at the time of the Declaration of Independence. As relates to these States, it is too plain
for argument, that they have never been regarded as a part of the people or citizens of the State,
nor supposed to possess any political rights which the dominant race might not withhold or grant
at their pleasure. And as long ago as 1822, the Court of Appeals of Kentucky decided that free
negroes and mulattoes were not citizens within the meaning of the Constitution of the United
States; and the correctness of this decision is recognized and the same doctrine affirmed, in 1
Meigs' Tenn. 321.
And if we rum to the legislation of the States where slavery had worn out, or measures
taken for its speedy abolition, we shall find the same opinions and principles .equally fixed and
equally acted upon.
Thus, Massachusetts, in 1786, passed a law similar to the colonial one of which we have
spoken. And this mark of degradation was renewed, and again impressed upon the race, in the
careful and deliberate preparation of their Revised Code published in 1836.
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