THE ATTITUDE OF CERTAIN NORTHERN STATES

THE Constitution of the United States provides: "2. A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice and be found in another state, shall, on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime.

No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another state, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

The first of the foregoing clauses provides for the return of fugitives from justice, and the second, of fugitive slaves.

The attitude of certain Northern States with reference to these two provisions of the constitution was a subject of profound importance in the years immediately preceding the Civil War, and constituted one of the greatest grievances of the people of the slaveholding states.

At the time the constitution was adopted, slavery existed in every one of the thirteen states except Massachusetts, though in some others acts had been passed providing for its gradual abolition. It was deemed essential, therefore, to the peaceful relations of the several

'Constitution of the United States, Article IV, Sub-section 2.

202

ORIGIN OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

states as well as the legal rights of slaveholders that some provision should be inserted in the Federal Constitution dealing with the return of fugitive slaves as well as fugitives from justice. If a slave could, by passing from New York into Massachusetts, absolve himself from slavery with no remedy for the master except the grace of the latter state, in which the institution was not recognized, then not only were the rights of the slaveholding citizens of New York dependent upon the laws of Massachusetts, but such conditions would doubtless engender strife and reprisals between the different states of the Union.

The necessity, as well as the justice, of fugitive slave laws was recognized almost contemporaneously with the introduction of slavery into this country. Thus, in the Article of Confederation adopted in 1643, between the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven, it was provided,

"If any servant runn away from his master into any other of these Confederated Jurisdiccons, that in such case upon the Certyficate of one Magistrate in the Jurisdiccon out of which the said servant fled, or upon other due proofe, the said servant shall be delivered either to his master or any other that pursues and brings such certyficate or proofe."

Provisions of like character were incorporated in many of the treaties between the various colonies and the Indian tribes, and later between the United States Government and the Indians.

The Ordinance of 1784, as adopted by Congress, contained no provision for the return of fugitive slaves escaping into the territory northwest of the Ohio River, and as

'Plymouth Colony Records, IX, p. 5, and Fugitive Slaves, Boston, 1891, McDougall, p. 7.

FUGITIVE SLAVES AND THE CONSTITUTION 203

we have seen, the provision prohibiting slavery therein had been stricken out before its adoption.

On the 16th of March, 1785, Rufus King of Massachusetts presented a resolution amending the Ordinance of 1784, so as to prohibit slavery in the northwest territory, which resolution was referred to a committee consisting of King, William Howell and William Ellery; the last two members being from Rhode Island.

On the 6th of April, 1785, a report was presented from this committee to Congress, providing for an amendment of the existing ordinance, so as to exclude slavery from the northwest territory after the year 1800," the resolution to be an article of compact" between the thirteen original states and those created out of the territory. The amendment so reported also made provision for the return to their masters of fugitive slaves escaping into the territory from any of the thirteen original states.1

No action was taken upon this report, but at the time the Ordinance of 1787 was under consideration, July 13th, 1787, a provision was inserted prohibiting slavery in the northwest territory along with a fugitive slave clause, by the unanimous vote of all the states present.2

The same year, the Constitutional Convention, in session at Philadelphia, inserted a like fugitive slave clause in the Federal Constitution.

On the 12th of February, 1793, Congress passed an act providing the method for carrying into effect the section of the constitution relating to fugitives from justice and fugitive slaves. Both subjects are treated and provided for in the same act. It passed both houses of Congress

'History of the Ordinance of 1787, American Antiquarian Society, new series, Vol. V, p. 315.

'Idem, p. 335.

204

RETURN OF FUGITIVE SLAVES

by practically unanimous votes-Washington approving the bill with his signature.

By this statute, the authorities of the several states were charged with the duty of executing the law with reference to the return of fugitives from justice.

With respect, however, to fugitive slaves, the authority and burden of dealing with their return was placed upon officers of the Federal Government as well as upon certain state officials. Despite the somewhat cumbrous character of the law, the return of fugitives from justice and of fugitive slaves was assured, and little controversy arose until some forty years after its enactment. But with the rise of the Abolitionists at the North difficulties in executing the law began to appear-especially as to fugitive slaves.

William Lloyd Garrison began the publication of The Liberator in 1831. The American Anti-Slavery Society was organized in 1833 and soon thereafter the Underground Railroad commenced its operations. Under the influence of these forces, not only was the execution of the law with reference to fugitive slaves in many of the Northern States greatly hindered but the slaves enticed or escaping from their masters became much more numerous. The irritating effects of these conditions upon Southern slaveholders were intensified by the suggestion that the law was fairly enforced as long as there were slaves in the so-called free states. In time, however, the Legislatures of many of the Northern States adopted state laws which were undoubtedly designed to defeat the execution of the Federal statute, and thus was added the sanction of states through their law-making bodies to the illegal attitude and acts of their citizens. This political action of these states not only aroused the indignation of slaveholders,

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

205

but enlisted in their behalf the sympathies of their nonslaveholding fellow citizens. The attitude of the Abolitionists and the action of the Northern States above referred to were regarded by the people of Virginia as a violation of the constitutional rights of their state, as well as a wanton injury to the property interests of her slaveholding citizens. The Abolitionists, by every form of suggestion and appeal, incited and assisted slaves to desert their masters, while the Underground Railroad provided increasing facilities for accomplishing the result. Professor A. B. Hart, of Harvard University, says:

"The Underground Railroad was not a route but a network; not an organization, but a conspiracy of thousands of people banded together for the deliberate purpose of depriving their Southern neighbors of their property and of defying the Fugitive Slave Laws of the United States."

With such a system in active operation, it only became necessary, in order to invest the whole movement with the dignity of state usurpation and wrong, for states to enact the so-called Personal Liberty Laws.

'Slavery and Abolition, Hart, p. 228.