It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces.

Simultaneously with the establishment of the Constitution, Virginia ceded to the United States her domain, which then extended to the Mississippi, and was even claimed to extend to the Pacific Ocean.

The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever-growing influence of the Bible.

There is not only no free state which would now establish it, but there is no slave state, which, if it had had the free alternative as we now have, would have founded slavery.

But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes.

It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces.

There is a higher law than the Constitution.