State constitutions
object · 2 works · 4 mentions · 11 anchored passages
contemporary State constitutions · fundamental constitutions or charters · most of the state constitutions · the State constitutions · the constitutions of every one of the thirteen States · the state constitutions · the then existing State constitutions
in the texts
The Unconstitutionality of Slavery
The founding charters of the individual states, argued to have never authorized slavery as a legal institution.
The most they claim is, that it recognized it as an institution already legally existing, under the authority of the State governments;
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;
Even if the constitution of the United States had intended to recognize slavery, as a constitutional State institution, such intended recognition would have failed of effect, and been legally void, because slavery then had no constitutional existence to be recognized.
Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated
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'.
” towards which, let us run over most of the state constitutions.
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.
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.