the existence of slavery, no measure restraining slavery could be
applied by Congress to this territory. But to remove all doubt on this
head, it was made a condition of the cession of this territory to the
United States, that the ordinance of 1787, except the sixth article
thereof, respecting slavery, should be applied to the same; and that
the sixth article should not be so applied. Accordingly, the States of
Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, comprehending the territory ceded
to the United States by North Carolina and Georgia, have been admitted
as new States into the Union, without a provision, by which slavery
shall be excluded from the same. According to this abstract of the
proceedings of Congress in the admission of new States into the Union,
of the eight new States within the original limits of the United States,
four have been admitted without an article excluding slavery; three have
been admitted on the condition that slavery should be excluded; and one
admitted without such condition. In the few first cases, Congress were
restrained from exercising the power to exclude slavery; in the next
three, they exercised this power; and in the last, it was unnecessary to
do so, slavery being excluded by the State Constitution.

The province of Louisiana, soon after its cession to the United States,
was divided into two territories, comprehending such parts thereof as
were contiguous to the river Mississippi, being the only parts of the
province that were inhabited. The foreign language, laws, customs,
and manners of the inhabitants, required the immediate and cautious
attention of Congress, which, instead of extending, in the first
instance, to these territories the ordinance of 1787, ordained special
regulations for the government of the same. These regulations were from
time to time revised and altered, as observation and experience showed
to be expedient, and as was deemed most likely to encourage and
promote those changes which would soonest qualify the inhabitants for