President Lincoln in his inaugural address, referring to the clause of the constitution providing for the return of fugitive slaves, and the contention as to whether the same should be executed by Federal or state officials, said: "If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done. And should any one in any case be content that his oath should go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?"
RHODE ISLAND ALONE ACCEDES
Despite these considerations, Rhode Island alone repealed the obnoxious statutes, and great leaders of the Republican Party frankly confessed that the constitution and the law would not be respected in certain of the Northern States. Salmon P. Chase, speaking in the Peace Conference at Washington, in February, 1861, alluding to the provision of the constitution for the return of fugitive slaves, said: "The people of the free states, however, who believe that slave-holding is wrong cannot and will not aid in the reclamation, and the stipulation becomes therefore a dead letter."[[301]]
Of the Personal Liberty Laws Mr. George Lunt of Boston in his work, Origin of the Late War, says: "They constitute an extreme exemplification of the broadest claim to state sovereignty, and put the states which authorized them in direct hostility to the United States. They were not one whit more defensible than the Rebellion itself to which they had such a principal part in preparing the minds of the seceding states."[[302]]
FUGITIVES FROM JUSTICE
Closely associated with the controversies growing out of the return of fugitive slaves and the action of certain Northern States, in defeating the provision of the constitution in regard thereto, was the attitude of many of the same states with respect to the provision for the return of the fugitives from justice. A few notable instances will suffice to illustrate the subject and its profound influence in arraying Southern States, as states, against certain of their Northern sisters.
NON-COMPLIANCE WITH CONSTITUTION
In 1837 the Governor of Georgia made requisition upon the Governor of Maine for the return to the former state of the captain of a ship charged with aiding and abetting a slave to desert his master. The Governor of Maine refused to comply with the requisition, alleging that the laws of that state did not recognize slavery or the offense complained of as an indictable one. Thereupon the Legislature of Georgia petitioned Congress to enact some law to compel state authorities to comply with this provision of the Federal Constitution. No action, however, was taken by Congress, nor was the slave or his abductor ever carried back to Georgia.[[303]]
In 1841 the Governor of Virginia made requisition upon the Governor of New York for the return of two men indicted in the former state for aiding and enticing slaves to leave their masters. William H. Seward was at that time Governor of New York. He refused to honor the requisition, alleging that the offense for which the parties were indicted was not one deemed criminal by the laws of New York or the nations of the world. A long and peace-destroying controversy in which the Legislatures of the two states became involved followed; but the fugitives were never returned, and the people of Virginia felt that the highest law officer of a sister state had been recreant to his obligations to the Federal Constitution and reckless of the rights of their state.
In 1860, the Governor of Kentucky made requisition upon the Governor of Ohio for the return to the former state of a fugitive from justice indicted for the violation of a statute imposing penalties upon persons aiding slaves to escape from their masters. The Governor of Ohio refused to honor the requisition; thereupon the State of Kentucky instituted a suit in the Supreme Court of the United States against the Governor of Ohio, to compel him to comply with the provision of the Federal Constitution above referred to and deliver up the fugitive from justice.