d
compromise of that year. But the very fact that the Federal Government
had taken the matter into its own hands, and provided for its execution
by its own officers, afforded a sort of pretext to those States which
had now become hostile to this provision of the Constitution, not only
to stand aloof, but in some cases to adopt measures (generally known as
"personal liberty laws") directly in conflict with the execution of the
provisions of the Constitution.

The preamble to the Constitution declared the object of its founders to
be, "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity." Now, however (in 1860), the people of a portion of the
States had assumed an attitude of avowed hostility, not only to the
provisions of the Constitution itself, but to the "domestic
tranquillity" of the people of other States. Long before the formation
of the Constitution, one of the charges preferred in the Declaration of
Independence against the Government of Great Britain, as justifying the
separation of the colonies from that country, was that of having
"excited domestic insurrections among us." Now, the mails were burdened
with incendiary publications, secret emissaries had been sent, and in
one case an armed invasion of one of the States had taken place for the
very purpose of exciting "domestic insurrection."

It was not the passage of the "personal liberty laws," it was not the
circulation of incendiary documents, it was not the raid of John Brown,
it was not the operation of unjust and unequal tariff laws, nor all
combined, that constituted the intolerable grievance, but it was the
systematic and persistent struggle to deprive the Southern States of
equality in the Union--generally to discriminate in legislation against
the interests of their people; culminating in their exclusion from the
Territories, the common property of the States, as well as by the
infraction of their compact to promote domestic tranquillity.

The question with regard to the Territories has been discussed in the
foregoing chapters, and the argument need not be repeated. There was,
however, one feature of it which has not been specially noticed,
although it occupied a large share of public attention at the time, and
constituted an important element in the case. This was the action of the
Federal judic