It was the purpose of our fathers to create a National Government, and to endow it with adequate powers. They had known the perils of imbecility, discord, and confusion, protracted through the uncertain days of the Confederation, and they desired a government which should be a true bond of union and an efficient organ of national interests at home and abroad. But while fashioning this agency, they fully recognized the governments of the States. To the nation were delegated high powers, essential to the national interests, but specific in character and limited in number. To the States and to the people were reserved the powers, general in character and unlimited in number, not delegated to the nation or prohibited to the States.
The integrity of our political system depends upon harmony in the operations of the Nation and of the States. While the nation within its wide orbit is supreme, the States move with equal supremacy in their own. But, from the necessity of the case, the supremacy of each in its proper place excludes the other. The Nation cannot exercise rights reserved to the States, nor can the States interfere with the powers of the nation. Any such action on either side is a usurpation. These principles were distinctly declared by Mr. Jefferson in 1798, in words often adopted since, and which must find acceptance from all parties.
I have already amply shown to-day that Slavery is in no respect national—that it is not within the sphere of national activity,—that it has no "positive" support in the Constitution,—and that any interpretation inconsistent with this principle would be abhorrent to the sentiments of its founders. Slavery is a local institution, peculiar to the States, and under the guardianship of State rights. It is impossible, without violence to the spirit and letter of the Constitution, to claim for Congress any power to legislate either for its abolition in the States or its support anywhere. Non-Intervention is the rule prescribed to the nation. Regarding the question in its more general aspects only, and putting aside, for the moment, the perfect evidence from the records of the convention, it is palpable that there is no national fountain out of which the existing Slave Act can possibly spring.
But this Act is not only an unwarrantable assumption of power by the nation, it is also an infraction of rights reserved to the States. Everywhere within their borders the States are peculiar guardians of personal liberty. By jury and habeas corpus to save the citizen harmless against all assault is among their duties and rights. To his State the citizen, when oppressed, may appeal; nor should he find that appeal denied. But this Act despoils him of rights, and despoils his State of all power to protect him. It subjects him to the wretched chance of false oaths, forged papers, and facile commissioners, and takes from him every safeguard. Now, if the slaveholder has a right to be secure at home in the enjoyment of Slavery, so also has the freeman of the North—and every person there is presumed to be a free man—an equal right to be secure at home in the enjoyment of freedom. The same principle of State rights by which Slavery is protected in the slave States throws an impenetrable shield over Freedom in the free States. And here, let me say, is the only security for Slavery in the slave States, as for Freedom in the free States. In the present fatal overthrow of State rights you teach a lesson which may return to plague the teacher. Compelling the National Government to stretch its Briarean arms into the free States for the sake of Slavery, you show openly how it may stretch these same hundred giant arms into the slave States for the sake of Freedom. This lesson was not taught by our fathers.
Here I end this branch of the question. The true principles of our political system, the history of the National Convention, the natural interpretation of the Constitution, all teach that this Act is a usurpation by Congress of powers that do not belong to it, and an infraction of rights secured to the States. It is a sword, whose handle is at the National Capital, and whose point is everywhere in the States. A weapon so terrible to personal liberty the nation has no power to grasp.
(2). And now of the denial of Trial by Jury.
Admitting, for the moment, that Congress is intrusted with power over this subject, which truth disowns, still the Act is again radically unconstitutional from its denial of Trial by Jury in a question of personal liberty and a suit of common law. Since on the one side there is a claim of property, and on the other of liberty, both property and liberty are involved in the issue. To this claim on either side is attached Trial by Jury.
To me, Sir, regarding this matter in the light of the Common Law and in the blaze of free institutions, it has always seemed impossible to arrive at any other conclusion. If the language of the Constitution were open to doubt, which it is not, still all the presumptions of law, all the leanings to Freedom, all the suggestions of justice, plead angel-tongued for this right. Nobody doubts that Congress, if it legislates on this matter, may allow a Trial by Jury. But if it may, so overwhelming is the claim of justice, it MUST. Beyond this, however, the question is determined by the precise letter of the Constitution.
Several expressions in the provision for the surrender of fugitives from service show the essential character of the proceedings. In the first place, the person must be, not merely charged, as in the case of fugitives from justice, but actually held to service in the State which he escaped. In the second place, he must "be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." These two facts—that he was held to service, and that his service was due to his claimant—are directly placed in issue, and must be proved. Two necessary incidents of the delivery may also be observed. First, it is made in the State where the fugitive is found; and, secondly, it restores to the claimant complete control over the person of the fugitive. From these circumstances it is evident that the proceedings cannot be regarded, in any just sense, as preliminary, or ancillary to some future formal trial, but as complete in themselves, final and conclusive.