Compacts, Terms & Conditions

In 1820, Senator James Tallmadge of New York proposed that a condition requiring the gradual abolishment of slavery be attached to the admission of Missouri as a State. The condition was objected to by Missouri and the southern States. Senator William Pickney of Maryland argued that no condition could be imposed on Missouri which would make it less equal to the older States. If Congress attempted to assert the condition, it could be ignored by Missouri once it was admitted into the Union. Pickney's argument was later enforced in the 1851 Supreme Court case of Strader v. Graham, where the court ruled that Ohio as a State could have permitted slavery, despite having been formerly subject as a territory to anti-slavery provisions of the Northwest Ordinance.

Justice Lurton provided a comprehensive analysis of the effect of conditions of Enabling Acts upon the subsequent sovereignty of the state in Coyle v. Smith, 221 U.S. 559 (1911):

"We come now to the question as to whether there is anything in the decisions of this court which sanctions the claim that Congress may, by the imposition of conditions in an enabling act, deprive a new state of any of those attributes essential to its equality in dignity and power with other states. In considering the decisions of this court bearing upon the question, we must distinguish, first, between provisions which are fulfilled by the admission of the state; second, between compacts or affirmative legislation intended to operate in futuro, which are within the scope of the conceded powers of Congress over the subject ; and third, compacts or affirmative legislation which operates to restrict the powers of such new state in respect of matters which would otherwise be exclusively within the sphere of state power.

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