If any one will read the history of the times, he will see that "the fathers," the framers of the Constitution, were, in making this very compromise, governed by the purest, the most patriotic, and the most humane, of motives. He who accuses them of corruption shows himself corrupt; especially if, like Mr. Sumner, he can laud them on one page as demi-gods, and on the very next denounce them as sordid knaves, who, for the sake of filthy lucre, could enter into a "felonious and wicked" bargain. Yet the very man who accuses them of having made so infamous and corrupt a bargain in regard to the slave trade can and does most eloquently declaim against the monstrous injustice of supposing them capable of the least act in favor of slavery!
[221] XII. Wendell, p. 314.
[222] XIV. Wendell, p. 530; XVI. Peters, p. 608.
[223] Indeed, if we had produced all the arguments in favor of the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law, it would have carried us far beyond our limits, and swelled this single chapter into a volume.
[224] This decision of the Supreme Court, which authorizes the master to seize his fugitive slave without process, (see his speech, Appendix to Congressional Globe, vol. xxii., part 2, p. 1587,) is exceedingly offensive to Mr. Chase of Ohio; and no wonder, since the Legislature of his own State has passed a law, making it a penitentiary offense in the master who should thus prosecute his constitutional right as declared by this decision. But, in regard to this point, the Supreme Court of the United States does not stand alone. The Supreme Court of New York, in the case of Jack v. Martin, had previously said: "Whether the owner or agent might have made the arrest in the first instance without any process, we will not stop to examine; authorities of deserved respectability and weight have held the affirmative. 2 Pick. 11, 5 Serg. & Rawle, 62, and the case of Glen v. Hodges, in this court, before referred to, (in 9 Johnson,) seem to countenance the same conclusion. It would indeed appear to follow as a necessary consequence, from the undoubted position, that under this clause of the Constitution the right and title of the owner to the service of the slave is as entire and perfect within the jurisdiction of the State to which he has fled as it was in the one from which he escaped. Such seizure would be at the peril of the party; and if a freeman was taken, he would be answerable like any other trespasser or kidnapper."
[225] Story on Constitution, vol. iii. book iii., chap. xl.
[226] The framers of the Constitution in that Congress were:—"John Langdon and Nicholas Gilmer, of New Hampshire; Caleb Strong and Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts; Roger Sherman and Oliver Elsworth, of Connecticut; Rufus King, of New York; Robert Morris and Thomas Fitzsimmons, of Pennsylvania; George Reid and Richard Basset, of Delaware; Jonathan Dayton, of New Jersey; Pierce Butler, of South Carolina; Hugh Williamson, of North Carolina; William Few and Abraham Baldwin, of Georgia; and last, but not least, James Madison, of Virginia." Yet from not one of these framers of the Constitution—from not one of these illustrious guardians of freedom—was a syllable heard in regard to the right of trial by jury in connection with the Fugitive Slave Law then passed. The more pity it is, no doubt, the abolitionist will think, that neither Mr. Chase, nor Mr. Sumner, nor Mr. Seward, was there to enlighten them on the subject of trial by jury and to save the country from the infamy of such an Act. Alas! for the poor, blind fathers!
[227] This crime of kidnapping, says Mr. Chase, of Ohio, is "not unfrequent" in his section of country; that is, about Cincinnati.
[228] Appendix to Congressional Globe, vol. xxii., part ii., p. 1587.
[229] The property in slaves in the United States is their service or labor. The Constitution guarantees this property to its owner, both in apprentices and slaves. And the Supreme Court has decided, Judge Baldwin presiding, that all the means "necessary and proper" to secure this property, may be constitutionally used by the master, in the absence of all statute law. The Roman law made the slave of that law, to be, not a personal chattel, held to service or labor only, as is the American apprentice or slave, but to be a mere thing; and guaranteed to the master the right to do with that mere thing, just as he pleased. To cut it up, for instance, as the master sometimes did, to feed fishes.