State constitutions · Atlas

in the texts

The Unconstitutionality of Slavery19th Century · English

The founding charters of the individual states, argued to have never authorized slavery as a legal institution.

for if slavery had no constitutional existence, under the State constitutions, prior to the adoption of the constitution of the United States, then it is absolutely certain that the constitution of the United States did not recognize it as a constitutional institution;

ch. 8 ¶

Suppose, for an illustration of this principle, that the constitution of the United States had, by implication, plainly taken it for granted that the State legislatures had power—derived from the State constitutions—to order arbitrarily that infant children, or that men without the charge of crime, should be maimed—deprived, for instance, of a hand, a foot, or an eye.

ch. 8 ¶

We have already seen that slavery had not been authorized or established by any of the fundamental constitutions or charters that had existed previous to this time;

ch. 8 ¶

Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated19th Century · English

The collected constitutions of the individual states, surveyed and quoted as a body of textual evidence for the meaning of the terms 'state' and 'people'.

Without further quotations, let us demonstrate the force of these, extracted from a majority of the state constitutions, to fix the meaning of the term “state” according to the publick judgment, by substituting the word “government” for it.

section 4.: the union. ¶

It would be an incivility to the reader, to subjoin to these quotations, many arguments, to prove, that the term “state” is not in any one instance used in reference to all the people of the United States, either as composing a single state, or as being about to compose a single state.

section 4.: the union. ¶

” towards which, let us run over most of the state constitutions.

section 4.: the union. ¶