The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was passed in strict conformity with the Constitution of the United States; and it impressed upon the executive authorities of the several States the duty of arrest, and upon their magistrates the obligation to hear and commit the fugitives for return. That act was generally recognized as just in its essence and object. As late as 1850 even the Free Soil party assented to the legal principle it involved. In execution, however, its processes were greatly abused; unlawful seizures, unwarranted reclamations and ruthless kidnappings were common occurrences in the lower parts of the Border States along the line of Slavery and Freedom. Pennsylvania, after respectful hearing of the Maryland Commissioners and due consideration for their suggestions, enacted the Act of 1826, which made the State Courts the arbiters of claims to fugitives; forbade justices to exercise these powers; and, in the line of Pennsylvania’s movements since 1780 to extinguish slavery and protect free persons, it made the free-born children of escaped slaves citizens of Pennsylvania and put them under its protection. This legislation accorded with judicial decisions of the highest court in Pennsylvania. In Commonwealth _v._ Halloway, 2 S. & R., 305 (1816), Mary, a negro slave of James Course of Maryland, absconded from her master and came to Philadelphia, where, after she had resided for about two years, her child Eliza was born. It was held that under the Act of March 1, 1780, which Pennsylvania passed “for the gradual abolition of slavery,” this child, born as she was, was entitled to freedom; that the provision of the Federal Constitution for the return of a slave from one state “escaping into another,” did not apply to the free-born child of a fugitive, and that even under the Constitution of the United States the child Eliza was born free. Justice Gibson filed a concurring opinion, at the conclusion of which he said: “Whether this case is to be considered a hard one or not will depend much upon the temper with which the mind may contemplate the positive and artificial rights of the master over the mother, on the one hand, or on the other the natural rights of her child.”