It may be confidently predicted that when our long-looked-for local Stronghand in imaginative literature shall seek for a theme near at home, he will find it in the dramatic story of the “Christiana Riot”; or when some gifted Lancaster County Son of Song shall arise and strike the trembling harp strings, the scene of his epic will follow the winding Octoraro and lie along the track of the Fugitive Slave.
CHAPTER II.
The Law of the Land.
The Early Compromises of the Constitution—Pennsylvania’s Move Toward Abolition—The Act of 1826—The Prigg Case—Border Troubles—The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850—Wrongs of Escaped Slaves and Rights of Their Owners.
It is entirely unnecessary for the purposes of this particular story to enlarge upon, or to review at length, the long debate, the innumerable compromises, the many makeshifts and the unending controversies which attended the discussion of the slavery question from the agitation and adoption of the Federal Constitution to the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850—and which then left it utterly unsettled. It is, however, important that a few plain landmarks of the law be kept in sight to guide one who would fitly study the general history of the times and fairly estimate the significance of the local events to be narrated.
The Union of the States was only effected by the adoption of Art. IV; the general purpose of which was to require each State to give full faith and credit to the public acts and records of other States. The exact language of its section 3 was:
“No Person held to Service or Labour 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 Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.”
No union could have been effected without this agreement. Whether that federation was a contract from which any party to it could retire, for a violation of it by other parties thereto, need not be discussed here. The affirmative of that proposition was not the creed of any particular party or section. It was originally maintained by New England Federalists; it was later defended by Southern Democrats; it was at last decided adversely in battle and by the sword. While there is now general acquiescence in the result, the final decision was not the prevailing doctrine of the people of the United States in 1851.
Under the Constitution the Right to Reclaim the fugitive slave was no more unmistakable than the Duty to Return him. The Law of the Land gave to each State the right to regulate its own domestic institutions; and that right was expressly recognized and guaranteed even by the Republican party and by Abraham Lincoln long after the outbreak of the Civil War. The slavery questions upon which political parties differed up to 1851 were not disputes as to the rights of slave owners and slaves in Slave States; nor as to the rights of slave owners against their escaped slaves in Free States, but as to the extension of slavery and the status of the institution in the National territories.