Mr. KASSON, I was proceeding to answer that question at the moment I was interrupted. I will now proceed to answer it, and afterward all other questions which may be put in good faith. This clause was adopted from the language of the ordinance of 1787. At the time that that ordinance became the law of the land, the institution of slavery did exist defacto in the several States of this Union in fact, in the majority of the States of this Union. There was, therefore, at that time, according to law, an existing condition of slavery, into which men could be sold if necessary, according to the language of that ordinance. Since that time the Congress of the U.S., supported by 3/4ths of the States of the Jnion, and indorsed by the people of the country, has abolished the condition of slavery into which a freeman could under any circumstances be sold. The consequence is that the reason for that construction of this language has failed; and, according to an old legal maxim, the law itself fails, so far as it could under other circumstances receive that interpretation. I affirm, sir, without fear of successful and reasonable contradiction, that, in this condition of things, since the antislavery amendment was adopted, you cannot find a condition of chattel slavery existing in the U.S. into which a freeman can be sold under this language of the Constitution. On the contrary, a freeman can be condemned by the law only to the involuntary servitude now existing with in the U.S., within the walls of pris ons, and within the jurisdiction of the law and the officers of the law. And it is upon this principle, in view of this fact of construction, that I assert that the interpretation given to that clause of the Constitution has been erroneous wherever it has been adopted; that there is no longer found within the U.S. any such description of slavery as that into which, according to the construction in the southern States, free men may justifiably be condemned. Well, sir, further than that, further than the general right we have to construe any statute in the creation of which we have taken part as the Congress of the U.S., I also affirm, under the 2nd section of that amendment the Congress of the U.S. has the right to enforce that antislavery amendment, and in that right of enforcement we have the right to say what falls within the terms of that amendment as being slavery or involuntary servitude. This is the clause to which I refer: “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation;” and aside from the general right to which I have referred, I find the right in the 2nd clause of the amendment to define the species of slavery or involuntary servitude into which a free man may be lawfully condemned by the laws of the country. Now, I will hear what the gentleman has to ask.