made, and upon proof, to the satisfaction of such judge or magistrate, either by oral testimony or affidavit taken before and certified by a magistrate of any such State or Territory, that the person so seized or arrested doth, under the laws of the State or Territory from which he or she fled, owe service or labor to the person claiming him or her, it shall be the duty of such judge or magistrate to give a certificate thereof to such claimant, his agent or attorney, which shall be sufficient warrant for removing the said fugitive from labor to the State or Territory from which he or she is fled.

SEC. 4. That any person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct or hinder such claimant, his agent or attorney, in so seizing or arresting such fugitive from labor, or shall rescue such fugitive from such claimant, his agent or attorney, when so arrested, pursuant to the authority herein given or declared, or shall harbor or conceal such person, after notice that he or she was a fugitive from labor, as aforesaid, shall, for either of the said offences, forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred dollars. Which penalty may be recovered by and for the benefit of such claimant, by the action of debt, in any court proper to try the same; saving, moreover, to the person claiming such labor or service, his right of action for, or on account of, the said injuries, or either of them.

Approved February 12, 1793.

The clauses of these acts are statutory commentaries upon the understanding of the times, by the decision of a unanimous Congress, that the owner or his agent had a right to apprehend and seize his own slave wherever he could find him, without let or hinderance; and, that he had a right to apply as well to the State courts as to the United States officers, for assistance in procuring a certificate for the removal of a fugitive slave. The act was but the confirmation of previous usage, and only prescribed a uniform and convenient mode of dealing with the subject. It may well be said that it instituted no new practice, but only enforced an old one. "The colonial history of the country would show that, at one period, slavery was recognised as a legal institution in all the colonies; and that in all of them a conventional or customary law prevailed, which conferred on the owner of a fugitive slave the right to reclaim him wherever he might be found." After the Revolution, the public sentiment of some of the northern States, in which slave labor had become of little value, commenced undergoing a change. In 1780, Pennsylvania passed an act for the gradual abolition of slavery; and in the same year, Massachusetts made provision for the prospective emancipation of her slaves. In a few years afterwards, these examples were followed by all or nearly all the New England States. The southern States, however, for obvious causes, from soil and climate and local relations, continued to retain the institution. This state of things was calculated, and, in fact, was leading to angry controversies, and to conflicting and retaliatory legislation, unpropitious to the harmony and peace of the States. The compromises of the constitution, under which we entered into the Union, arrested this tendency of things, by containing such guarantees as gave confidence and supposed security to the slaveholders of the South. These guarantees and solemn pledges were generally observed in good faith until about 1819. About that time, the institution of absolute slavery (it still being continued in a modified form) was expiring under the acts of previous legislation in New

York. About the same time, the voice of discord was heard in the debates on the Missouri question. It was, as Mr. Jefferson expressed it, "like the sound of a fire-bell in the night." It roused dormant elements of mischief. Sectional prejudice and sectional ambition have assumed an alarming shape, well calculated to arrest the profound attention of all patriots who are interested in the perpetuity of the Union.

From the date referred to, the legislation of the non-slaveholding States has taken the direction of design, and has assumed a form well calculated to undermine the guarantees of the constitution and to put in jeopardy the rights of the slaveholding portion of this confederacy. A justification of these remarks will be found by a reference to the acts of several non-slaveholding States, all pervaded by a common feeling, and all having, apparently, a systematic aim; to make war both upon slavery and the political power of slaveholders-a design deprecated by many non slaveholding citizens, but promoted by more. It is certain that legislative enactments, and even judicial decisions, from the time referred to, have assumed a new character in the non-slaveholding States. In New York, 17 Johnson's Reports, 4, it has been decided that the State courts have no power or right to exercise any jurisdiction conferred on them by an act of Congress; and, as a consequence, that Congress cannot vest in the State magistrates, and sheriffs and constables, power to execute the act of 1793, as is attempted by that act. Without questioning the soundness of the decision, it gives to the constitution a different construction from that which Congress unanimously entertained at the time the act was passed, and, in effect, deprives the non slaveholding States of a recognised remedy for the security and protection of their property.

The legislation of some of the non-slaveholding States has been of a less equivocal character, and more palpably unconstitutional, as it has been determined, by judicial decisions, the paramount law of the land. In all, or nearly all, the eastern and northern non slaveholding States, laws have been passed, since 1820, prohibiting, under high penalties, the owner of a fugitive slave from apprehending such slave without the previous authority of a magistrate; and, after an apprehension so effected, in many cases, giving the slave the writ of habeas corpus and the right of trial by jury, thus throwing vexatious and hostile impediments in the way of the owner, well calculated to deter him from asserting his rights, and in palpable violation of the constitution.

Your committee have not time to refer specifically to these laws in detail; and, as they are generally of the same purport, it is unnecessary. One, however, must be referred to, not by way of invidious distinction, because it was not as objectionable in its provisions as others, but for the reason that it has undergone an elaborate judicial investigation, and its character settled by an authoritative judgment of the Supreme Court. We refer to a law of Pennsylvania, passed in 1826. It may be remarked here that New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and several other States, had laws going beyond this in design and operation.

The first section of that act provides that, "if any person shall, by force and violence, take and carry away, or shall cause to be taken and carried away, or shall, by fraud and false pretence, seduce or cause to be seduced, or shall attempt to take and carry away, or to seduce any negro or mulatto from any part of that commonwealth, with a design of selling and disposing of, or causing to be sold, or of keeping and detaining, or of causing to be

kept and detained, such negro or mulatto as a slave or servant for life, or for any term whatsoever, every such person, by aiding and abetting, &c., shall, on conviction thereof, be deemed guilty of felony, and shall forfeit and pay a sum not less than five hundred nor more than one thousand dol lars; and, moreover, shall undergo imprisonment for any term or terms of years not less than seven nor more than twenty-one years, and shall be kept and confined to hard labor."

There are other provisions of the statute in express conflict with the act of 1793, to which it is unnecessary to advert on this occasion.

One Prigg was indicted under this statute for taking and carrying away a certain negro woman, named Margaret, into the State of Maryland, with the design and intention of selling and disposing of and keeping her as a servant for life, contrary to the statute. The defendant pleaded not guilty to the indictment, and, at the trial, the jury found a special verdict, which, in substance, states that the negro woman, Margaret Morgan, was a slave for life, and held to labor and service under, and according to, the laws of Maryland, to a certain Margaret Ashmore, a citizen of Maryland; that the slave escaped and fled to Pennsylvania in 1832; that the defendant, as the legally constituted agent of Margaret Ashmore, in 1837, caused the said woman, Margaret, to be taken and apprehended as a fugitive from labor by a State constable, under a warrant from a Pennsylvania magistrate; that the said woman was thereupon brought before the said magistrate, who refused to take further cognizance of the cause; and thereupon the defendant did take and carry away the said negro, &c., out of Pennsylvania into Maryland, and did deliver her to her owner, Margaret Ashmore.

Upon this state of facts, the courts in Pennsylvania, both on the circuit and on appeal, adjudged that the defendant was guilty of the crime charged-in effect holding that a citizen of a slaveholding State could not pursue and apprehend his fugitive slave in a non-slaveholding State.

The cause was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States, and there underwent discussion and investigation becoming the magnitude of the questions involved in it. The case is to be found reported 16 Peters, 611. The essential question, involving the guilt or innocence of the accused, depended upon the proper construction of the article of the constitution relative to fugitive slaves, and the act of 1793 made to enforce it. And that question presented this important consideration to the court: Had the owner of a fugitive slave, escaping into a non-slaveholding State, the right to apprehend and seize him or her in such State, as one of the incidents of perfect ownership? The act of Pennsylvania had made it criminal for one to make such seizure of his own slave while in the territorial limits of Pennsylvania. Judge Story delivered the judgment of the Supreme Court, reversing, on all the points, the judgment below. Upon the point just referred to, his judgment is full and instructive. He uses the following language:

"Historically, it is well known that the object of this clause was to secure to the slaveholding States the complete right and title of ownership in their slaves, as property, in every State in the Union into which they might escape from the State where they were held in servitude. The full recognition of the right and title was indispensable to the security of this species of property in all the slaveholding States; and, indeed, was so vital to the preservation of their domestic interests and institutions, that it

cannot be doubted that it constituted a fundamental article, without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed."

This clause was of such controlling and paramount importance to the Southern States, that they in effect made ita sine qua non; the non slaveholding States seemed to have regarded it in the same light, for the clause was adopted into the constitution by the unanimous consent of the framers of it.

The clause manifestly contemplates the existence of a positive unqualified right on the part of the owner of the slave, which no State law or regulation can, in any way, qualify, regulate, control, or restrain. It puts the right of the owner, with all its incidents, upon the same ground in all the States. His right, to be perfect, must be the same in all the non-slaveholding States, as in the State from which the fugitive fled. The owner must, therefore, have the right to seize and repossess the slave, which the local laws of his own State confer on him as property, and that is a right recognised in all the slaveholding States.

Thus far, the right of the owner to apprehend his slave is well recognised and maintained by the opinion; but there is another question of more complexity involved in the discussion of the case: How shall he obtain the possession when there is a detention or denial of right on the part of individuals? The constitution is explicit that a slave escaping into a non slaveholding State shall not be discharged from service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on the claim of the party to whom such labor may be due. For many years, as has been stated, the State authority, both judicial and ministerial, contributed actively to aid in measures for the delivery of the fugitive to his master. The act of '93 presupposes such an agency to be implied as an obligation of duty. One of the grounds taken in the case adverted to was, that Congress, having exclusive jurisdiction over the subject, was bound to suply and enact all the legislation that might be required to carry fully into effect the article of the constitution; and that, therefore, the States had no authority to legislate one way or the other on the subject-that is, either to provide for the delivery of a fugitive, or to impair the rights of the citizens of slaveholding States in a remedy afforded by the laws of the Union. The court decided that the power of legislation, being exclusive in Congress, could not, for any purpose, be concurrent in the States. The consequences of the decision could not have been foreseen, and inferences have been drawn from it by most of the non slaveholding States, certainly repugnant to the drift of the decision, and in violation of the spirit of the constitution, and in opposition to ancient usage and contemporaneous construction.

The views which were taken by Chief Justice Taney evince the circumspection and wisdom of a great constitutional magistrate. They are the views which the framers of the constitution had taken, and which seemed to have been confirmed by a mutual understanding of the States for many years.

The Chief Justice concurred with the court entirely in all that was said in relation to the right of the master, by virtue of the 3d clause of the 2d section of 4th art. of the constitution, to arrest his slave in any State wherein he might find him; and in pronouncing the law of Pennsylvania, under which Prigg was indicted, unconstitutional and void. His reasons for this opinion are strikingly put. He does not regard any other question

as necessarily involved in the case, so far as it regarded the innocence or guilt of the party charged-nor do the committee.

The court did, however, go on to say, and perhaps to decide, that the power to provide a remedy for the master was exclusively vested in Congress; and that all laws upon the subject, passed by the States since the adoption of the constitution, are null and void; even although they were intended, in good faith, to protect the owner in the exercise of his rights of property, and do not in any way conflict with the act of Congress. So far from maintaining that the States are prohibited from interfering by legislation to protect and aid the master, the learned Chief Justice says: "They are not prohibited; but, on the contrary, it is enjoined upon them, as a duty, to protect and support the owner when he is endeavoring to ob tain possession of his property, found within their respective territories." It does seem to the committee that this view of the matter is unanswerable. The argument so ably sustained is summed up in one sentence: "The States are, in express terms, forbidden to make any regulation to impair the master's right; but there the prohibition stops. Justices Thompson and Daniel, in well sustained judgments, concurred with the Chief Justice. Judge Thompson said he had filed his opinion principally to guard against the conclusion "that, by my silence, I assent to the doctrine that all legislation on the subject rested exclusively in Congress, and that all State legislation, in the absence of any law of Congress, is unconstitutional and void." Several of the non-slaveholding States, those to the east and north especially, have, since the above decision was made, which was in 1842, shaped their legislation in such a manner as to repeal all State laws in favor of a master in pursuit of his fugitive slave, holding such laws as unconstitutional, and as a dead letter on the statute book. And these States, or many of them, have gone much further, and have passed laws making it penal for the judicial and ministerial officers to interfere or give aid in the apprehension and delivery of a fugitive slave to his owner. Instead of being friends under the constitution to afford active aid in the delivery, they have devised a system of hostile legislation to deprive him of aid. Instead of being allies to discharge an obligation imposed on them, they have become hostile opponents to defeat it.

Let these laws speak for themselves. The following are the laws of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Having an identity of design, they use the same language:

SECTION 1. No judge of any court of record in this State, and no justice of the peace, shall hereafter take cognizance or grant a certificate in cases that may arise under the third section of the act of Congress passed February 12, 1793, and entitled "An act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters," to any person who claims any other person as a fugitive slave within the jurisdiction of the State.

SEC. 2. No sheriff, deputy sheriff, coroner, constable, jailor, or other officer of this State, shall hereafter arrest or detain, or aid in the arrest or detention or imprisonment, in any jail or other building belonging to this State, or to any county, city or town thereof, of any person for the reason that he is claimed as a fugitive slave.

SEC. 3. Any justice of the peace, sheriff, deputy sheriff, coroner, constable, or jailor, who shall offend against the provisions of this law in any way, directly or indirectly, under the power conferred by the third section