Still, both when they invited the cessions of their territorial claims by the States of Virginia, New York, &c., and after those cessions had been made, Congress acted as if they had constitutional authority to form new States, and to admit them into the Union. (_Ante_, Vol. I. 292-308.) When the Ordinance of 1787, for the regulation and government of the Northwestern Territory, was adopted, the power to admit new States was again assumed. The Convention for forming the Constitution was, however, then sitting, and it may be that the framers of the Ordinance introduced into that instrument the stipulation that the new States should be admitted on an equal footing with the old ones, in the confidence that the constitutional power would be supplied by the Convention. At any rate, the provisions of the Ordinance, as well as those of the previous resolves of Congress on the same subject of the Northwestern Territory, and the position of Kentucky, Vermont, Maine, and Tennessee (then called Franklin), imposed upon the Convention an imperative necessity for some action that would open the door of the Union to new members.
[45] _Ante_, Vol. I. Book III. Chap. III. pp. 260-275.
[46] As the resolution was originally passed, it declared that "a republican constitution, and its existing laws, ought to be guaranteed to each State by the United States." On account of the ambiguity of the expression "existing laws," and the controversies to which it might give rise, the provision was subsequently changed to a guaranty of "a republican form of government," and of protection against "invasion" and "domestic violence," as it now stands in Art. IV. Sect. 4 of the Constitution.
[47] Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia voted for it (6); Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, and Maryland voted against it (5).
[48] See Madison, Elliot, V. 157, 158, 183.
[49] Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, _ay_, 6; Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, _no_, 3; Delaware, Maryland, divided. See further on the subject of "Ratification," _post_, Index.
[50] The report was in the following words:--
"1. _Resolved_, That it is the opinion of this committee that a national government ought to be established, consisting of a supreme legislative, executive, and judiciary.