The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act / An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts, Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9

by Lydia Maria Child

The second compact is:

"The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States."

Under this provision, an attempt was made to obtain some action of Congress for the protection of colored seamen in slaveholding ports; but it was decided that Congress had no power to act on the subject, because the Constitution had not delegated any power to the United States in the clause referred to. Slaveholders are very strict in adherence to the Constitution, whenever any question of protection to colored people is involved in their decisions; but for purposes of oppression, they have no scruples. They reverse the principle of Common Law, that "in any question under the Constitution, every word is to be construed in favor of liberty."

The third compact is:

"A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, or be found in another State, shall, on demand of the Executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime."

It has never been pretended that Congress has any power to act in such cases. There is no clause delegating any power to the United States; consequently, all proceedings on the subject have been left to the several States.

The fourth compact is:

"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."

If the framers of the Constitution had meant that Congress should have power to pass a law for delivering up fugitives "held to service or labor," they would have inserted a clause delegating such power, as they did in the compact concerning "public acts and records." The Constitution does not delegate any such power to the United States. Consequently, Congress had no constitutional right to pass the Fugitive Slave Bill, and the States are under no constitutional obligation to obey it.

The Hon. Horace Mann, one of Massachusetts' most honored sons, in his able speech on this subject in Congress, 1851, said:—"In view of the great principles of civil liberty, out of which the Constitution grew, and which it was designed to secure, my own opinion is that this law cannot be fairly and legitimately supported on constitutional grounds. Having formed this opinion with careful deliberation, I am bound to speak from it and to act from it. I have read every argument and every article in defence of the law, from whatever source emanating. Nay, I have been more anxious to read the arguments made in its favor, than the arguments against it; and I think I have seen a sound legal answer to all the former." * * * "It is a law that might be held constitutional by a bench of slaveholders, whose pecuniary interests connect them directly with slavery; or by those who have surrendered themselves to a pro-slavery policy from political hopes. But if we gather the opinions of unbiassed and disinterested men, of those who have no money to make, and no office to hope for, through the triumph of this law, then I think the preponderance of opinion is decidedly against its constitutionality. It is a fact universally known, that gentlemen who have occupied and adorned the highest judicial stations in their respective States, together with many of the ablest lawyers in the whole country, have expressed opinions against the constitutionality of this law." * * * "When I am called upon to support such a law as this, while it lasts, or to desist from opposing it in all constitutional ways, my response is, Repeal the law! that I may no longer be called upon to support it. I demand it, because it is a law which conflicts with the Constitution of the country, and with all the judicial interpretations of that Constitution, wherever they have been applied to the white race. Because it is a law abhorrent to the moral and religious sentiments of a vast majority of the community called upon to enforce it. Because it is a law which, if executed in the Free States, divests them of the character of Free States, and makes them voluntary participators in the guilt of slaveholding. Because it is a law Which disgraces our country in the eyes of the whole civilized world, and gives plausible occasion to the votaries of despotic power to decry republican institutions. Because it is a law which forbids us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and which makes it a crime to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and to visit and succor the sick and imprisoned. Because it is a law which renders the precepts of the Gospel and the teachings of Jesus Christ seditious; and were the Savior and his band of disciples now on earth, there is but one of them who would escape its penalties by pretending to 'conquer his prejudices.'" * * * "Suppose the whole body of the white population should be as much endangered by this law, as the colored people now are, would the existence of the law be tolerated for an hour? Would there not be a simultaneous and universal uprising of the people against it, and such a yell of execration as never before burst from mortal lips?"