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a State, arises from that provision of the Constitution which declares
that "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."

This being a fundamental law of the Federal Government, it rests
mainly for its execution, as has been held, on the judicial power of
the Union; and so far as the rendition of fugitives from labor has
become a subject of judicial action, the Federal obligation has been
faithfully discharged.

In the formation of the Federal Constitution, care was taken to confer
no power on the Federal Government to interfere with this institution
in the States. In the provision respecting the slave trade, in fixing
the ratio of representation, and providing for the reclamation of
fugitives from labor, slaves were referred to as persons, and in no
other respect are they considered in the Constitution.

We need not refer to the mercenary spirit which introduced the
infamous traffic in slaves, to show the degradation of negro slavery
in our country. This system was imposed upon our colonial settlements
by the mother country, and it is due to truth to say that the
commercial colonies and States were chiefly engaged in the traffic.
But we know as a historical fact, that James Madison, that great and
good man, a leading member in the Federal Convention, was solicitous
to guard the language of that instrument so as not to convey the idea
that there could be property in man.

I prefer the lights of Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, as a means of
construing the Constitution in all its bearings, rather than to look
behind that period, into a traffic which is now declared to be piracy,
and punished with death by Christian nations. I do not like to draw
the sources of our domestic relations from so dark a ground. Our
independence was a great epoch in the history of freedom; and while I
admit the Government was not made especially for the colored race, yet
many of them were citizens of the New England States, and exercised
the rights of suffrage when the Constitution was adopted, and it was
not doubted by any intelligent person that its tendencies would
greatly ameliorate their condition.

Many of the States, on the adoption of the Constitution, or shortly
afterward, took measures to abol