elivering up of fugitives from
service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the
Constitution as any other of its provisions:

"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."

It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who
made it for the re-claiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the
intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear
their support to the whole Constitution--to this provision as much as
any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within
the terms of this clause, "shall be delivered up," their oaths are
unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they
not, with nearly equal unanimity, frame and pass a law by means of which
to keep good that unanimous oath?

There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be
enforced by National or by State authority; but surely that difference
is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be
of but little consequence to him, or to others, by what authority it is
done. And should any one, in any case, be content that his oath should
go unkept, on a mere unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be
kept?

Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of
liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so
that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave? And might
it not be well, at the same time, to provide by law for the enforcement
of that clause of the Constitution which guarantees that "the citizens
of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States"?

I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservation, and with no
purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules.
And while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as
proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all,
both in official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all
those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting
to find impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional.

It is seventy-two years since the first in