Permission of the African Slave-trade. (Const. Art. 1, sec. 9.)
In the great case of Gibbons vs. Ogden, 9 Wheaton's Reports, pp. 206 and 207 (1824), Chief Justice Marshall, delivering the opinion of the supreme court, makes use of the following language:—
"The Act passed in 1803 (Act Const. 1803, c. 63), prohibiting the importation of slaves into any State which shall itself prohibit their importation, implies, it is said, an admission that the States possess the power to exclude or admit them; from which it is inferred, that they possess the same power with respect to other articles.
"If this inference were correct; if this power were exercised, not under any particular clause in the Constitution, but in virtue of a general right over the subject of commerce to exist as long as the Constitution itself, it might now be exercised. Any State might now import African slaves into its own territory. But it is obvious that the power of the States over this subject, previous to the year 1808, constitutes an exception to the power of Congress to regulate commerce; and the exception is expressed in such words as to manifest clearly the intention to continue the pre-existing right of the States to admit or exclude for a limited period. The words are, 'The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to 1808.' The whole object of the exception is to preserve the power to those States which might be disposed to exercise it, and its language seems to the court to convey this idea unequivocally."
See also pp. 216, 217.
Restoration of Fugitive Slaves. (Const. Art. 4, sec. 2.)
The following extracts are taken from the opinion of the supreme court in the well-known case, Prigg vs. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (16 Pet. Rep. 609, &c.). Judge Story delivered the opinion:—
"Historically, it is well known, that the object of this clause was to secure to the citizens of the slaveholding States the complete right and title of ownership in their slaves, as property, in every State in the Union into which they might escape from the State where they were held in servitude. The full recognition of this right and title was indispensable to the security of this species of property in all the slaveholding States; and, indeed, was so vital to the preservation of their domestic interests and institutions, that it cannot be doubted that it constituted a fundamental article, without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed. Its true design was to guard against the doctrines and principles prevalent in the non-slaveholding States, by preventing them from intermeddling with, or obstructing, or abolishing, the rights of the owners of slaves."
Page 612: "If the Constitution had not contained this clause, every non-slaveholding State in the Union would have been at liberty to have declared free all runaway slaves coming within its limits, and to have given them entire immunity and protection against the claims of their masters;—a course which would have created the most bitter animosities, and engendered perpetual strife, between the different States. The clause was, therefore, of the last importance to the safety and security of the Southern States, and could not have been surrendered by them without endangering their whole property in slaves. The clause was accordingly adopted into the Constitution by the unanimous consent of the framers of it;—a proof at once of its intrinsic and practical necessity."