No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another state, 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."[[289]]
ORIGIN OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW
The first of the foregoing clauses provides for the return of fugitives from justice, and the second, of fugitive slaves.
The attitude of certain Northern States with reference to these two provisions of the constitution was a subject of profound importance in the years immediately preceding the Civil War, and constituted one of the greatest grievances of the people of the slaveholding states.
At the time the constitution was adopted, slavery existed in every one of the thirteen states except Massachusetts, though in some others acts had been passed providing for its gradual abolition. It was deemed essential, therefore, to the peaceful relations of the several states as well as the legal rights of slaveholders that some provision should be inserted in the Federal Constitution dealing with the return of fugitive slaves as well as fugitives from justice. If a slave could, by passing from New York into Massachusetts, absolve himself from slavery with no remedy for the master except the grace of the latter state, in which the institution was not recognized, then not only were the rights of the slaveholding citizens of New York dependent upon the laws of Massachusetts, but such conditions would doubtless engender strife and reprisals between the different states of the Union.
The necessity, as well as the justice, of fugitive slave laws was recognized almost contemporaneously with the introduction of slavery into this country. Thus, in the Article of Confederation adopted in 1643, between the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven, it was provided,
"If any servant runn away from his master into any other of these Confederated Jurisdiccons, that in such case upon the Certyficate of one Magistrate in the Jurisdiccon out of which the said servant fled, or upon other due proofe, the said servant shall be delivered either to his master or any other that pursues and brings such certyficate or proofe."[[290]]
Provisions of like character were incorporated in many of the treaties between the various colonies and the Indian tribes, and later between the United States Government and the Indians.
The Ordinance of 1784, as adopted by Congress, contained no provision for the return of fugitive slaves escaping into the territory northwest of the Ohio River, and as we have seen, the provision prohibiting slavery therein had been stricken out before its adoption.
On the 16th of March, 1785, Rufus King of Massachusetts presented a resolution amending the Ordinance of 1784, so as to prohibit slavery in the northwest territory, which resolution was referred to a committee consisting of King, William Howell and William Ellery; the last two members being from Rhode Island.