Such obviously is the meaning and legal effect of the fugitive slave provision in the ordinance. And the meaning of that, derived as it is not merely from the consent of the Federal and State conventions, but from their concurrent action, necessarily fixes the meaning of the provision on the same subject in the Constitution, and shows how it must have been understood. As the two were parts of the same compromise, of course neither was understood to be inconsistent with the other. The provision in the Constitution is in these words:
"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."
So far as this describes, or was understood to describe, persons held to service or labor as slaves, it necessarily must also have been understood to apply only to the original States. This follows from what has already been shown. And it must have been so understood for another reason, because it was only "in" and "under" the laws of those States that persons could be held to service or labor as slaves. Under the laws of the Territories and new States, their being so held was forever prohibited. Hence, none but those escaped from one of the original States could ever be legally liable to reclamation, according to the understanding and intention of the original parties to this compact. This manifestly was the meaning of "the fathers," when the ordinance and Constitution were framed and ratified.
The two provisions must be construed together. That in the ordinance was intended for the Territories and new States, and that in the Constitution for the original States. If that in the Constitution had been intended for the Territories, it would have read, "escaping into another State or into the Territory," and that in the ordinance would have been entirely omitted. The proviso to the prohibition in the Missouri Compromise in 1820 is a striking confirmation of this. That was copied, word for word, from the ordinance of 1787, or original compromise, except substituting for the words "in any one of the States," the words "in any State or Territory of the United States," as follows:
"Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive," &c. And in the compromise of 1820:
"Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any State or Territory of the United States, such fugitive," &c.
Why say "in any State or Territory of the United States," instead of "in any one of the original States," as in the ordinance of 1787, unless the Congress of 1820 understood the latter to limit the right of recovering fugitive slaves to the original States, and meant by the Missouri bill to extend it to all the States and Territories? They did extend it, but in palpable violation of the "spirit of the compact of the fathers," and of the "policy of 1787."
Originally the Southern States committed themselves to the policy of slavery restriction, by a compact in the nature of a contract for a consideration. By their own votes, they relinquished all pretence of right to any slaves beyond the jurisdiction of the original States. Slaveholders, as such, voluntarily shut themselves out of the new States, in consideration of the right of recovering their fugitive slaves in whatever part of America they might take refuge. The object, as I have clearly shown, was to secure to slavery in the original States the right of recovering fugitives, whether their escape should be from one of those States to another, or to the Territories and new States; but to make that the limit, both of the right of recovery on one side, and of the obligation to permit or allow it, on the other.
It follows, then: