“One prevailing opinion, which has created great prejudice against this judgment, is, that it denies the right of a person claimed as a fugitive from service or labor to a trial by jury. This mistake arises from supposing the case to involve the general question as to the constitutionality of the Act of 1793. But in fact no such question was in the case, and the argument that the Act of 1793 was unconstitutional, because it did not provide for a trial by jury according to the requisitions of the sixth [seventh] article in the Amendments to the Constitution, having been suggested to my father, on his return from Washington, _he replied, that this question was not argued by counsel nor considered by the Court, and that he should still consider it an open one_.”[328] Evidently, according to this authentic record by his son, the necessity of a trial by jury was not argued by counsel nor considered by the Court, while the judge for himself declared that he should consider it an “open” question; so that the constitutionality of the Act in this important respect has not been affirmed. But the Senate is now asked to affirm it. We are asked to vote that a fellow-man be handed over to Slavery without trial by jury. To me this proposition is hateful beyond the power of words to express. But the Senator, not content with affirming the constitutionality of the Act of 1793, has plunged into a general discussion on the fugitive clause of the Constitution. He insists laboriously that it was intended to cover fugitive slaves. When I reminded him that its authors might have intended it to cover fugitive slaves, without succeeding in their attempt, he still insists that it does cover fugitive slaves. Well, Sir, there I meet him point-blank. I insist, that, whatever the original intention of the framers of that clause, they did not leave it so as to cover fugitive slaves. It remains a question of construction, and the language employed is not applicable to fugitive slaves. It does not describe them, and cannot by any just tribunal be extended to embrace them. If the prepossessions of the Senator were more evenly balanced, I should not doubt his judgment on this point, which in the light of jurisprudence is so clear.