blood. No corruption of attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted. Acts of States accredited. ARTICLE IV. SECTION I. Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public acts, records, and judicial proceeding of every other State. And the Congress may, by general laws, prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof. Privileges of citizenship. Fugitives from justice to be delivered up. Fugitive slaves to be delivered up. SECTION II. The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States. A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall, on demand of the Executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime. No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due. SECTION III. New States may be admitted by the New States. Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the legislatures of the States concerned, as well as of the Congress. The Congress shall have power to dis pose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular State. SECTION IV. Territory and other property of the United States. of government. States. The United States shall guaranty to Republican form every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect Protection of each of them against invasion, and, on application of the legislature, or of the Executive (when the legislature can not be convened), against domestic violence. Amendments of this Constitution. ARTICLE V. The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate. Debts of former government recognized. ARTICLE VI. All debts contracted and engagements entered into before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the confederation. the supreme law. This Constitution, and the laws of the What constitutes United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. officers. The Senators and Representatives before Oath of public mentioned, and the members of the several State legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution; but no religious test No religious test. shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. ARTICLE VII. The ratification of the conventions of Ratification. nine States, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the same. Done in convention, by the unanimous consent of the States present, the seventeenth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven, and of the In 288 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. dependence of the United States of America the twelfth. In witness whereof, we have hereunto subscribed our names. GEO: WASHINGTON, President, and Deputy from Virginia. NEW HAMPSHIRE. John Langdon, MASSACHUSETTS. Nathaniel Gorham, Rufus King. CONNECTICUT. William Samuel Johnson, Roger Sherman. NEW YORK. Alexander Hamilton. NEW JERSEY. William Livingston, PENNSYLVANIA. B. Franklin, Robert Morris, George Clymer, Thomas Fitzsimons, Jared Ingersoll, James Wilson, DELAWARE. George Read, Gunning Bedford, jun., Richard Bassett, Jacob Broom. MARYLAND. James McHenry, Dan of St. Thomas Jenifer, VIRGINIA. John Blair, James Madison, jun. NORTH CAROLINA. William Blount, Rich'd Dobbs Spaight, Hu. Williamson. SOUTH CAROLINA. J. Rutledge, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Charles Pinckney, Pierce Butler. GEORGIA. William Few, Abr. Baldwin. Gouv. Morris. Attest: WILLIAM JACKSON, Secretary. |