PERVERSIONS WITH REGARD TO ORIGIN OF THE FUGITIVE CLAUSE.
A slight examination will show prevailing perversions with regard to the origin and history of this clause. Not content with imparting to it a meaning which it cannot bear, the partisans of Slavery have given to this clause an origin and history having no foundation in truth.
It is common to assert that the clause was intended to remove or counteract some difficulty which had occurred anterior to the Convention. But there is no evidence of any such difficulty. There was no complaint. Not a single voice was raised in advance to ask any such security.
It is also asserted, with peculiar confidence, that this clause, interpreted to require the rendition of fugitive slaves, constituted one of the original compromises of the Constitution, without which the Union could not have been formed. This pretension makes an asserted stipulation for the rendition of fugitive slaves one of the corner-stones of the Union. To this discreditable imputation upon the fathers of the Republic the Supreme Court seems to have lent sanction, when it declared, in the famous Prigg case, not only that “the object of this clause was to secure to the citizens of the slaveholding States the complete right and title of ownership in their slaves as property in every State in the Union into which they might escape,” but that “the full recognition of this right and title … was so vital to the preservation of their domestic interests and institutions, that it cannot be doubted that it constituted a fundamental article, without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed.”[332] Mark the way in which this extraordinary statement is ushered in,—“It cannot be doubted”! But it is doubted, and more too. Chief Justice Taney, at a later day, put forth the statement, that, during the Revolution, it was an accepted truth that colored men “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,”[333]—and this statement was said to stand on authentic history; but it is now exploded, and the other statement must share the same fate. A careful inquiry shows that it is utterly without support in the records of the Convention, where the real compromises are revealed; nor is there a single contemporary pamphlet, speech, article, or published letter, out of which any such thing can be inferred. Surely, had this provision been of such controlling importance, it could not have escaped notice, at least, in the “Federalist,” when its writers undertook to describe and group the powers of Congress “which provide for the harmony and proper intercourse among the States”;[334] but the “Federalist” is entirely silent with regard to it. And yet we are gravely told “it cannot be doubted” that this provision “constituted a fundamental article, without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed.” Frequent repetition has caused the common belief that this was history, instead of fable.
The actual compromises of the Constitution are well known. They were three in number. One established the equality of all the States in the Union, by securing equal representation in the Senate for the small States and large States. Another allowed representatives to the Slave States according to the whole number of free persons and “three fifths of all other persons,” in consideration that direct taxes should be apportioned in the same way. Another was the toleration of the slave-trade for twenty years, in consideration of commercial concessions to the “Eastern members.” Such are the actual compromises of the Constitution, with regard to which there is evidence. But imagination or falsehood is the only authority for adding the rendition of fugitive slaves to this list.
TRUE ORIGIN OF THE FUGITIVE CLAUSE.
The debates of the Convention attest the little contemporary interest in this clause. In all the general propositions or plans successively brought forward, from the meeting on the 25th of May, 1787, there was no allusion to fugitive slaves; nor was there any allusion to them, even in debate, till as late as the 28th of August, when, as the Convention was drawing to a close, they were incidentally mentioned in a discussion on another subject. The question was on the article providing for the privileges of citizens in different States. Here is the authentic report by Mr. Madison of what was said.
“General [Charles Cotesworth] Pinckney was not satisfied with it. He seemed to wish some provision should be included in favor of property in slaves.”[335]