American Eloquence, Volume 3: Studies In American Political History (1897)
History
American Eloquence, Volume 3: Studies In American Political History (1897)
Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- History; United States -- Politics and government
"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." But the
non-slave-holding States, treacherous to their oaths and compacts, have
steadily refused, if the criminal only stole a negro, and that negro was
a slave, to deliver him up. It was refused twice on the requisition of
my own State as long as twenty-two years ago. It was refused by Kent and
by Fairfield, Governors of Maine, and representing, I believe, each
of the then Federal parties. We appealed then to fraternity, but we
submitted; and this constitutional right has been practically a dead
letter from that day to this. The next case came up between us and the
State of New York, when the present senior Senator (Mr. Seward) was
the Governor of that State; and he refused it. Why? He said it was not
against the laws of New York to steal a negro, and therefore he would
not comply with the demand. He made a similar refusal to Virginia. Yet
these are our confederates; these are our sister States! There is
the bargain; there is the compact. You have sworn to it. Both these
Governors swore to it. The Senator from New York swore to it. The
Governor of Ohio swore to it when he was inaugurated. You cannot bind
them by oaths.
Yet they talk to us of treason; and I suppose they expect to whip
freemen into loving such brethren! They will have a good time in doing
it!
It is natural we should want this provision of the Constitution carried
out. The Constitution says slaves are property; the Supreme Court says
so; the Constitution says so. The theft of slaves is a crime; they are
a subject-matter of felonious asportation. By the text and letter of the
Constitution you agreed to give them up. You have sworn to do it, and
you have broken your oaths. Of course, those who have done so look out
for pretexts. Nobody expected them do otherwise. I do not think I
ever saw a perjurer, however bald and naked, who could not invent some
pretext to palliate his crime, or who could not, for fifteen shillings,
hire an Old Bailey lawyer to invent some for him. Yet this requirement
of the Constitution is another one of the extreme demands of an
extremist and a rebel.
The next stipulation is that fugitive slaves shall be surrendered under
the provisions of the fugitive-slave act of 1850, without being entitled
either to a writ of _habeas corpus_, or trial by jury, or other similar
obstructions of legislation, in the State to which he may flee. Here is
the Constitution:
"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws
thereof, escaping into an-other, 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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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