"If any owner of slaves, or other person who shall have the care, management, or overseeing of any slaves, shall work, or put any such slave or slaves to labor, more than fifteen hours in twenty-four hours, from the twenty-fifth day of March to the twenty-fifth day of September, or more than fourteen hours in twenty-four hours, from the twenty-fifth day of September to the twenty-fifth day of March, every such person shall forfeit any sum not exceeding twenty pounds, nor under five pounds, current money for every time he, she, or they shall offend herein, at the discretion of the justice before whom the complaint shall be made."
The Provincial Assembly of Georgia (Act 1770, May 10, sec. 41) provided that,—
"If any person shall, on the Lord's day, commonly called Sunday, employ any slave in any work or labor (works of absolute necessity and the necessary occasions of the family only excepted), every person so offending shall forfeit and pay the sum of ten shillings for every slave he, she, or they shall so cause to work or labor."
A similar law was passed in South Carolina (Act 1740, sec. 22). These and similar laws, by limiting the hours of daily work and labor, or by providing that work and labor shall not be demanded of a slave on Sunday, recognize that on other days, and within certain hours, a master may legally demand them. That which may be legally demanded is legally due. Therefore, work and labor, or service, are legally due from the slave to his master. To this labor and service the slave is "held" by the law. If he refuses to work, his master may coerce him. If he runs away, his master may pursue and retake him legally. He is "held for life," or until emancipated according to law. Consequently, the expression in the Constitution correctly describes the condition of a slave. Indeed, it more correctly describes this condition than "chattel personal" would, because it is the almost universal practice to treat a slave in many important particulars, such as dower, &c. like real property; and, in some States, slaves are declared by statute to be real estate.
By this section, therefore, it is provided that no person held as a slave in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from his slavery, but shall be delivered up on claim of his owner. The laws of one State, whether they support slavery or any other institution, have no power in another State. Consequently, if a slave escapes into a Free State, he becomes free. This is the general rule of law. In virtue of it, thousands of slaves are now free on the soil of Canada. In virtue of it, a fugitive slave from South Carolina would be free in this State, were it not for this section in the Constitution. But this section declares that he shall not thereby become free, but shall be delivered up. Again, the Constitution makes an exception from a general rule of law in favor of slavery. It gives to slaveholders, and slave-laws, a power which the general rule of law does not give. It enables a South Carolina slaveholder to drag from the soil of Massachusetts a person whom the general rule of law pronounces free, solely because South Carolina laws declare the contrary. It makes the whole Union a vast hunting-ground for slaves! There is not a single spot from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the St. John's to the Rio del Norte, or "wheresoe'er may be the fleeting boundary of this republic," on which a fugitive slave may rest, and his owner may not, in virtue of this clause, claim and retake him as his slave!
Art. 1, sec. 8: "Congress shall have power ... to provide for calling forth the militia ... to suppress insurrections."
Art. 4, sec. 4: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and, on application of the legislature or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened), against domestic violence."
All insurrections and all cases of domestic violence are here provided for. To constitute an insurrection within the meaning of the Constitution, there must be a rising against those laws which are recognized as such by the Constitution; and, to make out a case of domestic violence, the violence must be exerted against that right or power which is recognized by the Constitution as lawful. But, by Art. 4, sec. 2, the Constitution admits that some persons are legally slaves; else the clause itself must be entirely inoperative. Consequently, if these persons rise in rebellion, or commit acts of violence contrary to the laws which hold them in slavery, their rising constitutes an insurrection; such acts are acts of violence within the meaning of the Constitution, and consequently must be suppressed by the national power. And what insurrections were more likely to happen and more to be dreaded than slave-insurrections, and therefore more likely to have been provided for?
Slave-owners are not the only slaveholders. All persons who voluntarily assist or pledge themselves to assist in holding persons in slavery are slaveholders. In sober truth, then, we are a nation of slaveholders! for we have bound our whole national strength to the slave-owners, to aid them, if necessary, in holding their slaves in subjection!