This clause is one of the compromises without which no Constitution would have been adopted. It was a guarantee to the States in which such labor and service existed by law, that their rights should be respected and regarded by all the States; and it is not within the competency of any State to disregard the obligation it imposes, or to render it valueless by legislative enactments. And _whereas_, the House of Representatives of the United States did, on the ---- day of February, by unanimous vote, declare that neither the Congress of the United States nor the people or government of any non-slaveholding State, has the constitutional right to legislate upon, or to interfere with slavery in any slaveholding State in the Union. This declaration is regarded by this Convention as an admission that the statutes of those States, passed for the purpose of defeating the provision of the Constitution aforesaid, and the laws of Congress made to enforce the just and proper execution of this constitutional guarantee, are in violation of the supreme law of the land. The provisions of the statutes in many of the non-slaveholding States, commonly known and called "personal liberty bills," amount in their consequences to a practical nullification of the acts of Congress of February 12th, 1793, and September 18th, 1850, and are in violation of the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution, as before stated. That the spirit of those statutes appears to be repugnant to the principles of compromise and mutual and liberal concessions which dictated the section of the Constitution in question, and which pervades every part of that instrument. It is, therefore, respectfully requested by this Convention that the several States abrogate all such obnoxious enactments. That the spirit of comity between the States, and the spirit of unity and fraternity which should actuate all the people of these United States, require that complete right and security of transit with all persons who owe them service or labor should be allowed to the citizens of each State by the laws of every other State. _Resolved_, That a copy of the foregoing be sent by the President of this Convention to the Governors of each of the free States, as the deliberate judgment and opinion of this Convention, and that he request the same be laid before their respective Legislatures.