al reasons of my refusal any longer to acknowledge my
allegiance to it, and of my determination to revoke my oath to support
it. I cannot, in order to keep the law of man, break the law of God,
or solemnly call him to witness my promise that I will break it.

It is true that the Constitution provides for its own amendment, and
that by this process, all the guarantees of Slavery may be expunged.
But it will be time enough to swear to support it when this is done.
It cannot be right to do so, until these amendments are made.

It is also true that the framers of the Constitution did studiously
keep the words "Slave" and "Slavery" from its face. But to do our
constitutional fathers justice, while they forebore--from very
shame--to give the word "Slavery" a place in the Constitution, they
did not forbear--again to do them justice--to give place in it to the
_thing_. They were careful to wrap up the idea, and the substance of
Slavery, in the clause for the surrender of the fugitive, though they
sacrificed justice in doing so.

There is abundant evidence that this clause touching "persons held to
service or labor," not only operates practically, under the Judicial
construction, for the protection of the slave interest; but that it
was _intended_ so to operate by the farmers of the Constitution. The
highest Judicial authorities--Chief Justice SHAW, of the Supreme Court
of Massachusetts, in the LATIMER case, and Mr. Justice STORY, in the
Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of _Prigg_ vs. _The
State of Pennsylvania_,--tell us, I know not on what evidence, that
without this "compromise," this security for Southern slaveholders,
"the Union could not have been formed." And there is still higher
evidence, not only that the framers of the Constitution meant by this
clause to protect slavery, but that they did this, knowing that
slavery was wrong. Mr. MADISON[13] informs us that the clause in
question, as it came of the hands of Dr. JOHNSON, the chairman of the
"committee on style," read thus: "No person legally held to service,
or labor, in one State, escaping into another, shall," &c. and that
the word "legally" was struck out, and the words "under the laws
thereof" inserted after the word "State," in compliance with the wish
of some, who thought the term _legal_ equivocal, and favoring the idea
that slavery was legal "_in a moral view_." A conclusive proof that,
although future generations might apply that clause to ot