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THE FUGITIVE SLAVE CLAUSE.

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ceptable to the extreme South. So, after one or two unsuccessful attempts, Mr. Butler finally gave to his proposition a shape in which it proved acceptable to a majority ; and it was adopted, with slight apparent resistance or consideration."

At length, when the Constitution was among the necessities or grievwas nearly completed, Slavery, ances which had impelled the asthrough its attorney, Mr. Butler, of sembling of this Convention. But South Carolina, presented its little the insertion of a slave-catching bill for extras. Like Oliver Twist, it clause in the Constitution would unwanted 'some more.' Its new de- doubtedly be regarded with favor by mand was that slaves escaping from the slaveholding interest, and would one State into another, might be fol- strongly tend to render the new lowed and legally reclaimed. This re-frame-work of government more acquirement, be it observed, was entirely outside of any general and obvious necessity. No one could pretend that there was any thing mutual in the obligation it sought to impose that Massachusetts or New Hampshire was either anxious to secure the privilege of reclaiming her fugitive slaves who might escape into Carolina or Georgia, or had any desire to enter into reciprocal engagements to this end. Nor could any one gravely insist that the provision for the mutual rendition of slaves was essential to the completeness of the Federal pact. The old Confederation had known nothing like it; yet no one asserted that the want of an inter-State Fugitive Slave law

slaves are considered merely as property, and in no respect whatever as persons. The true state of the case is, that they partake of both these qualities, being considered by our laws in some respects as persons, and in other respects as property. In being compelled to labor, not merely for himself, but for a master-in being vendible by one master to another master, and being subject, at all times, to being restrained in his liberty and chastised in his body by the capricious will of his owner, the slave may appear to be degraded from the human rank, and classed with that of the irrational animals, which fall under the legal denomination of property. In being protected, on the other hand, in his life and in his limbs, against the violence of all others, even the master of his labor and his liberty, and in being punished himself for all violence committed against others, the slave is no less regarded by the law as a member of society, not as a part of the irrational creation-as a moral person, not a mere object of property. The Federal Constitution, therefore, decides, with great propriety, on the case of our slaves, when it views them in the mixed character of persons and property. This is, in fact,

In these latter days, since the radical injustice and iniquity of slaveholding have been more profoundly realized and generally appreciated, many subtle and some able attempts have been made to explain away this most unfortunate provision, for the reason that the Convention wisely and decorously excluded the terms Slave and Slavery from the Constitution; "because," as "because," as Mr. Madison says, "they did not choose to admit

their true character. It is the character bestowed on them by the laws under which they live; and it will not be disputed that these are the proper criterion, because it is only under the pretext that the laws have transformed negroes into subjects of property, that a place is denied to them in the computation of numbers; and it is admitted that, if the laws were to restore the rights which have been taken away, the negroes would no longer be refused an equal share of representation with the other inhabitants."-The Federalist, vol. ii., p. 46.

' In Convention, Wednesday, August 29, 1787,

"Mr. Butler moved to insert, after Article XV., 'if any person bound to service or labor in any of the United States shall escape into another State, he or she shall not be discharged from such service or labor in consequence of any regulations existing in the State to which they escape, but shall be delivered up to the person justly claiming their service or labor'-which, after some verbal modification, was agreed to, nem. con."-Madison's Papers, vol. iii., p. 145, 6.

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slaveholders: "This provision is contrary to equity and good conscience; hence we can not obey it. To seize our fellow-man and thrust him into an abhorred bondage may in your eyes be innocent, in ours it would be crime. If, then, you are aggrieved in any case, by our refusal or neglect to return your fugitives, make out your bill for their fair market value and call upon us for its payment. If we refuse it, you will then have a real grievance to allege

the right of property in man." has been argued that this provision does not contemplate the rendition of fugitives from Slavery, but rather of runaway apprentices, persons who, having entered into contracts for their own labor, have repudiated their engagements, and other such Jonahs. The records and reminiscences of the Convention, however, utterly refute and dissipate these vain and idle pretenses. It is sheer absurdity to contend that South Carolina in the Convention was absorb-this, namely: that we have deingly intent on engrafting upon the Federal Constitution a provision for the recapture of runaway apprentices, or any thing of the sort. What she meant was, to extort from the apprehensions of a majority, anxious for a more perfect Union, a concession of authority to hunt fugitive slaves in any part of our broad national area, and legally to drag them thence back into perpetual bondage. If the Convention did not mean to grant exactly that, it trifled with a very grave subject, and stooped to an unworthy deception. How much better to meet the issue broadly and manfully, saying frankly to the

8 In the debate of Tuesday, July 29, 1788, in the North Carolina ratification convention, which was organized at Hillsborough, July 21, 1788:

"Mr. Iredell begged leave to explain the reason of this clause (last clause, Section 2, Article IV.). In some of the Northern States, they have emancipated all their slaves. If any of our slaves, said he, go there and remain there a certain time, they would, by the present laws, be entitled to their freedom, so that their masters could not get them again. This would be extremely prejudicial to the inhabitants of the Southern States; and, to prevent it, this clause is inserted in the Constitution. Though the word slave is not mentioned, this is the meaning of it. The Northern delegates, owing to their peculiar scruples on the subject of Slavery, did not choose the word slave to be mentioned."-Elliot's Debates, vol. iv., p. 176.

prived you of what the Constitution recognizes as your property, and have failed to make recompense therefor. But you surely can not blame us, that, having been enlightened as to the immoral nature of acts consented to, or stipulated for, by our fathers, we are unable longer to commit them. Take our property, if you think yourselves entitled to it; but allow us to be faithful to our convictions of duty and the promptings of humanity."

General Charles C. Pinckney, in laying the Federal Constitution before the Convention of South Carolina, which assembled January 15, 1788, to pass upon it, made a speech,

9 Governor Seward, in his speech of March 11, 1850, on Freedom in the Territories, forcibly set forth the true and manly Northern ground on this subject, as follows:

"The law of nations disavows such compacts; the law of nature, written on the hearts and consciences of freemen, repudiates them. I know that there are laws, of various sorts, which regulate the conduct of men. There are constitutions and statutes, codes mercantile and codes civil; but when we are legislating for States, especially when we are founding States, all these laws must be brought to the standard of the law of God, must be tried by that standard, and must stand or fall by it. To conclude on this point: We are not slaveholders. We can not, in our judgment, be either true Christians or real freemen, if we impose on another a chain that we defy all human power to fasten on ourselves.”—Seward's Works, vol. i., p. 66.

THE SOUTHERN TERRITORIES.

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in which he dwelt with reasonable and among the considerations which sejustifiable complacency on the advan-cured its ratification, by that body, by tages secured to Slavery by the Consti- a vote of 149 to 73. Other Southern tution;10 and these, doubtless, were States may have been thus affected.

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VI.

SLAVERY UNDER THE CONSTITUTION.

Ir has been plausibly argued that the constitutional provision for the surrender of fugitive slaves, and the inhibition of Slavery in the Territories simultaneously embodied in the Ordinance of 1787, were parts of an implied, rather than clearly expressed, compact, whereby Slavery in the old States was to be protected, upheld, and guaranteed, on condition that it should rest content within its existing boundaries. In seeming accordance with this hypothesis, the first Federal Congress, which met at New York on the first Wednesday in March, 1789, proceeded forthwith to adopt and reënact the prohibition of Slavery in the Territories, already contained in the Ordinance of '87 aforesaid, and to adapt that Ordinance in all respects to the new state of things created by the Federal Constitution. No

10 The following is an extract from General Chas. C. Pinckney's speech, delivered in the South Carolina ratification convention, January

17, 1788:

"I am of the same opinion now as I was two years ago-that, while there remained one acre of swamp land uncleared in South Carolina, I would raise my voice against restricting the importation of negroes. **** The Middle States and Virginia were for an immediate and total prohibition.

We endeavored to obviate the objections which were urged in the best manner we could, and assigned reasons for our insisting on the importation, which there is no occasion to repeat, as they must occur to every gentleman in the House: a committee of the 4

voice was raised in dissent from this action. On the other hand, the next Congress proceeded to enact, with very little opposition, a stringent and comprehensive fugitive slave law.'

North Carolina, on the 22d of December, 1789-one month after ratifying the Federal Constitutionpassed an act ceding, on certain conditions, her western territory-now constituting the State of Tennesseeto the Federal Union. She exacted and required Congress to assent to this, among other conditions:

"Provided always, that no regulation made, or to be made, by Congress, shall tend to emancipate slaves."

Georgia, likewise, in ceding to the Union (April 2, 1802) her outlying territories, now forming the States of Alabama and Mississippi, imposed upon the Union, and required Con

States was appointed in order to accommodate this matter; and, after a great deal of difficulty, it was settled, on the footing of the Constitution. By this settlement, we have secured an unlimited importation of negroes for twenty years. Nor is it declared when that importation shall right to recover our slaves in whatever part of be stopped; it may be continued. We have a sidering all circumstances, we have made the America they may take refuge. In short, conbest terms for the security of this species of property it was in our power to make. We would have made better if we could; but, on the whole, I do not think them bad."-Elliot's Debates, vol. iv., p. 285.

1 For this act, see Brightley's Digest, p. 294.

gress to accede to, the following con- | Confederation, leaving those still to

dition:

"Fifthly. That the territory thus ceded shall become a State, and be admitted into the Union as soon as it shall contain sixty thousand inhabitants, or at an earlier period, if Congress shall think it expedient, on the same conditions and restrictions, with the same privileges, and in the same manner, as is provided in the ordinance of Congress of the 13th day of July, 1787, for the government of the western territory of the United States; which ordinance shall, in all its parts, extend to the territory contained in the present act of cession, the article only excepted which forbids Slavery." Congress was thus precluded, by the unprecedented and peremptory conditions affixed to their respective cessions of their western territory by North Carolina and Georgia, from continuing and perfecting the Jeffersonian policy of fundamental and imperative Slavery inhibition in the Federal Territories. Had Mr. Jefferson's Ordinance of 1784 been passed as he reported it, this beneficent end would have been secured. Accident, and the peculiar requirements of the Articles of Confederation, prevented this. Mr. Dane's Ordinance of 1787 contemplated only the territories already ceded to the

2 The Rev. Jonathan Edwards (son of the famous Jonathan Edwards, who was the greatest theologian, and one of the greatest men whom New England has ever produced), preached a sermon against the African Slave-Trade, September 15, 1791, at New Haven, Connecticut, then a Slave State. Text: The Golden Rule; Matthew vii., 12.

It is so commonly urged that the Abolitionists condemn a relation whereof they are grossly ignorant, that the following extract from that sermon is of interest, as the testimony of one living amid Slavery, and as proving how essentially identical are the objections urged to human chattelhood at all times, and under whatever circumstances. Mr. Edwards said:

"African Slavery is exceedingly impolitic, as it discourages industry. Nothing is more essential to the political prospect of any State than industry in the citizens. But, in proportion as Slaves are multiplied, every kind of labor be

be ceded to be governed by some
future act. The assumption, how-
ever, that there was between the
North and the South an original and
subsisting compact, arrangement, un-
derstanding, or whatever it may be
called, whereby so much of the com-
mon territories of the Republic as
lay south of the Ohio, or of any par-
ticular latitude, was to be surren-
dered to Slavery, on the condition
that the residue should be quit
claimed to free labor, is utterly un-
founded and mistaken. The author
of the original restriction was him-
self a slaveholder; yet he contem-
plated and provided for (as we have
seen) the consignment of every açre
of those territories, north as well as
south of the Ohio, and down to the
southernmost limit of our domain, to
A majority
Free Labor evermore.
of the States which sustained that'
proposition were then slaveholding,
and had taken no decided steps
toward Emancipation. Yet they
none the less regarded Slavery as an
evil and a blunder,2 to be endured,

In a

comes ignominious; and, in fact, in those of the
United States in which slaves are the most nu-
merous, gentlemen and ladies of any fashion
disdain to employ themselves in business, which
in other States is consistent with the dignity of
the first families and the first offices.
country filled with negro slaves, labor belongs
to them only, and a white man is despised in
proportion as he applies to it. Now, how de-
structive of industry in all of the lowest and mid-
dle class of citizens such a situation, and the
prevalence of such ideas will be, you can easily
conceive. The consequence is that some will
nearly starve, others will betake themselves to
the most dishonest practices to obtain a means
of living. As Slavery produces an indolence in
the white people, so it produces all those vices
which are naturally connected with it, such as
intemperance, lewdness, and prodigality. These
vices enfeeble both the body and the mind, and
unfit men for any vigorous exertions and em-
ployments, either external or mental. And
those who are unfit for such exertions are
already very degenerate; degenerate, not only in

VIEWS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PATRIOTS.

perhaps, for a season where already established, rather than to invoke greater mischiefs and perils by its too sudden and violent extirpation than were likely to flow from its more patient and gradual extinction. But to plant Slavery on virgin soil-to consecrate vast and yet vacant territories to its extension and perpetuation-to conquer and annex still further domains expressly to increase its security and enlarge its power are guilty dreams which never troubled the repose of the great body of our Revolutionary sages and patriots. Enlightened by their own experience

a moral, but a natural sense. They are contemptible too, and will soon be despised, even by their negroes themselves.

"Slavery tends to lewdness, not only as it produces indolence, but as it affords abundant opportunity for that wickedness, without either the danger or difficulty of an attack on the virtue of a woman of chastity, or the danger of a connection with one of ill fame. A planter, with his hundred wenches about him, is, in some respects at least, like the Sultan in his seraglio; and we learn too frequently the influence and effect of such a situation, not only from common fame, but from the multitude of mulattoes in countries where slaves are very numerous.

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Slavery has a most direct tendency to haughtiness also, and a domineering spirit and conduct in the proprietors of slaves, and in their children, and in all who have control of them. A man who has been brought up in domineering over negroes can scarcely avoid contracting such a habit of haughtiness and domination as will express itself in his general treatment of mankind, whether in his private capacity, or any office, civil or military, with which he may be vested. Despotism in economics naturally leads to despotism in politics, and domestic Slavery in a free government is a perfect solecism in human affairs.

"How baneful all these tendencies and effects of Slavery must be to the public good, and especially to the public good of such a free country as ours, I need not inform you."-Sermons, 177599, p. 10.

3 The opinion of the Father of his Country respecting the "peculiar institution" of the South may be perceived from the following extracts. In a letter to Lafayette, bearing date April 5, 1783, he says:

"The scheme, my dear Marquis, which you propose as a precedent to encourage the emancipation of the black people in this country from that state of bondage in which they are held, is

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as to the evils and dangers of arbitrary, despotic, irresponsible power, they were too upright and too logical to seek to fasten for all time on a helpless and inoffensive race chains far heavier and more galling than those they had just shaken off. Most of them held slaves, but held them under protest against the anomaly presented to the world by republican bondage, and in the confident hope that the day would soon dawn that would rid themselves of the burden and their country of the curse and shame of human chattelhood. Had they been asked to unite in any of

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a striking evidence of the benevolence of your heart. I shall be happy to join you in so laudable a work; but will defer going into a detail of the business until I have the pleasure of seeing you."-Sparks's Washington, vol. viii., p 414. |

Again, in a letter to the same, of May 10, 1786:

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The benevolence of your heart, my dear Marquis, is so conspicuous upon all occasions, that I never wonder at any fresh proofs of it; but your late purchase of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, with a view to emancipate the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of your humanitself in the minds of the people of this country! ity. Would to God a like spirit might diffuse But I despair of seeing it. Some petitions were presented to the Assembly at its last session, for the Abolition of Slavery, but they could scarcely obtain a reading."—Ibid., vol. ix., p. 163.

In a remarkable and very interesting letter written by Lafayette in the prison of Magdeburg, he said:

"I know not what disposition has been made of my plantation at Cayenne; but I hope Madam De Lafayette will take care that the negroes who cultivate it shall preserve their liberty."

The following language is also Lafayette's, in a letter to Hamilton, from Paris, April 13, 1785: "In one of your New York Gazettes, I find an association against the Slavery of the negroes, give no offense to the moderate men in the which seems to me worded in such a way as to Southern States. As I have ever been partial to my brethren of that color, I wish, if you are one, in the society, you would move, in your own name, for my being admitted on the list."Works of Alex. Hamilton, N. Y., 1851, vol. i., p. 423.

John Adams, in a letter to Robert J. Evans, June 8, 1819, expresses himself as follows: "I respect the sentiments and motives which

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