Nor does it follow from any possible construction of the Constitution that it is wise and just for the American people to seize, through war, and to govern by force, the hostile tribes and peoples of the earth whether near to or remote.

Let them cease to denounce us as traitors; let them explain the facts on which they are arraigned; and let them answer the arguments that we offer in defence of the Republic.

Causes may be lost by misinterpreting or misrepresenting the issues, or by undervaluing the character and ability of opponents, but causes are not often won by such expedients.

Therefore, the struggle to change the issues, however made, or by whomsoever made, is a vain struggle.

An end would be answered if you and others could be induced to believe that in 1859 I had so construed the Constitution as to justify President McKinley in governing the Philippine Islands as though the Constitution of the United States…

Thus do my opinions receive more consideration from an opponent than they could command at the hands of a friend.

It is an error to assume that the question whether or not the Constitution extends to the Territories, was a prominent question, in the period of the anti- slavery controversy.

The question was this: Can a slaveholder move from a slave State to a Territory and be protected under the Constitution in holding his slaves as property?

Until the Dred Scott Decision, the controversy proceeded upon the idea that States and Territories were alike under the Constitution, and that by the Constitution slavery was neither authorized nor prohibited in any State, nor in any…

Inasmuch as at that time slavery was not prohibited under the Constitution, there was a general agreement in the proposition that Congress might authorize slavery in the Territories and that Congress might prohibit slavery in the…

From first to last the contest proceeded upon the theory, on all sides admitted to be a true theory, that the Constitution of the United States, by its own force, applied to all the Territories of the United States.

His theory was this: The Constitution so applies to the Territories that they must take places as States in the American Union, and the Constitution also requires Congress to accept the Territories as States, and with such institutions as…

I interrupt the course of my remarks to say that already in the Philippines we are tolerating and supporting slavery and polygamy, and preparing the way for the organization of Catholic and Mohammedan States, and their admission into the…

The people of a Territory have all the rights of the people of a State; and therefore there are no Territories belonging to the American Union, but all are by the silent negative operations of the Constitution of the United States…

It will not be possible for the people or the Congress of the United States to resist the admission of new States, inasmuch as their consent will not be asked.

I have reached a point in this discussion when this remark may be justified: No impartial reader of my article of 1859 can fail to discover that the discussion did not involve the question now raised.

The issue was this: Are the Territories bound by the Constitution to become States in the American Union against the judgment of the people, and are the existing States bound to accept a new State and that without regard to its…

No State shall make any law impairing the obligation of contracts.

If there could have been a doubt in 1859 of the validity of this interpretation, the doubt has been removed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The inhabitants of Territories are thereby made citizens of the United States, are brought within the jurisdiction of the Constitution, and as citizens they are put upon an equality with the citizens of the States.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

There cannot be any form of involuntary servitude imposed upon any American citizen without a violation of this fundamental law.

And this, we are told by the President and his supporters, is not imperialism, but a process of extending the blessings of liberty and civilization to the inferior races of the earth.

The claim of the President is the assertion of a right in Congress to establish a system of peonage or even of slavery in Alaska, Hawaii, and the rest.