2. The Constitution recognizes all the territories as open to slavery as
much as to freedom, except in those cases where it has been expressly
interdicted by the Federal Government; and it secures the legal right to
carry slaves into the territories, and any act of Congress, restricting
this right to hold slaves in the territories, is unconstitutional and
void.

3. Slavery is a natural institution, and not to be considered as local
and municipal.

4. The Constitution is simply a compact or league between sovereign
States, and when either party breaks, in the estimation of the other,
this contract, it is no longer binding upon the whole, and the party
that thinks itself wronged has a right, acting according to its own
judgment, to leave the Union.

5. This contract between sovereign States has been broken to such an
extent, by long and repeated aggressions upon the South by the North,
that the slave States who have seceded from the Union, or who may
secede, are not only right in thus doing, but are justified in taking up
arms, to prevent the collection of revenue by the Federal Government.

These ideas are universally repudiated in the free States. It is not my
purpose to discuss the social or moral relations of slavery, but simply
to consider under what circumstances the Constitution originated, and
what was the clear intent of those who adopted it as the organic or
fundamental law of the country. The last assumption taken by the
seceding States grows out of the first four, and therefore it becomes a
question of vital interest, what did the framers of the Constitution