nized without
restrictions on the disputed point, and were thus left to judge in that
particular for themselves; and the sense of constitutional faith proved
vigorous enough in Congress not only to accomplish this primary object,
but also the incidental and hardly less important one of so amending the
provisions of the statute for the extradition of fugitives, from service
as to place that public duty under the safeguard of the General
Government, and thus relieve it from obstacles raised up by the
legislation of some of the States.

Vain declamation regarding the provisions of law for the extradition of
fugitives from service, with occasional episodes of frantic effort to
obstruct their execution by riot and murder, continued for a brief time
to agitate certain localities. But the true principle of leaving each
State and Territory to regulate its own laws of labor according to its
own sense of right and expediency had acquired fast hold of the public
judgment, to such a degree that by common consent it was observed in the
organization of the Territory of Washington.

When, more recently, it became requisite to organize the Territories
of Nebraska and Kansas, it was the natural and legitimate, if not the
inevitable, consequence of previous events and legislation that the same
great and sound principle which had already been applied to Utah and New
Mexico should be applied to them--that they should stand exempt from the
restrictions proposed in the act relative to the State of Missouri.

These restrictions were, in the estimation of many thoughtful men, null
from the beginning, unauthorized by the Constitution, contrary to the
treaty stipulations for the cession of Louisiana, and inconsistent with
the equality of these States.

They had been stripped of all moral authority by persistent efforts to
procure their indirect repeal through contradictory enactments. They had
been practically abrogated by the legislation attending the organization
of Utah, New Mexico, and Washington. If any vitality remained in them it
would have been taken away, in effect, by the new Territorial acts in
the form originally proposed to the Senate at the first session of the
last Congress. It was manly and ingenuous, as well as patriotic and
just, to do this directly and plainly, and thus relieve the statute book
of an act which might be of possible future injury, but of no possible
future benefit; and the measure of its repeal was the final