persons held to labor escaping into another State, and it was not repealed until the war between the States. When the District of Columbia was created, by cessions from Maryland and Virginia, and became subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress in 1801, the existence of slavery was recognized and to some extent nationalized. Webster, vainly dreaming that a sense of justice and of mutual interest would insure the faithful execution of the clauses of the Constitution, after it became the fundamental law of the land, said in 1850 in a tone of pathetic dignity: "The principle of the restitution of runaway slaves is not objectionable unless the Constitution is objectionable."

This "agreement with hell"-so designated by Phillips, Garrison, and other abolitionists, who would not take an oath to support the Constitution because thereby they would commit themselves to the support of, and obedience to," a Pro-Slavery Compact"-was defiantly and joyously trampled under foot. There was no pretence of a purpose, nor the least conception of an obligation, to execute the law. Cheves said: "The highest violation of the Constitution is to employ the use of its forms to violate its spirit," but in this matter there was no disguise in the deliberate, avowed, overt, contemptuous disregard of a constitutional requirement. The judges, or marshals, or Senators and officers, Federal and State, who had any conscientious scruples, or hesi

tated in the annulment of a clear mandate, were rudely flung aside for the most fanatical radicals.

Judge Story, in the case of Prigg v. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, said: "Historically, it is well known that the object of this clause was to secure to the citizens of the slaveholding States the complete right and title of ownership in their slaves, as property, in every State of the Union, into which they might escape, from the State wherein they were held in servitude." "The full recognition of this right and title was indispensable to the security of this species of property in all the slaveholding States, and, indeed, was so vital to the preservation of their interests and institutions, that it cannot be doubted, that it constituted a fundamental article, without the adoption of which the Union would not have been formed. Its true design was to guard against the doctrines and principles prevalent in the non-slaveholding States by preventing them from intermeddling with, or restricting, or abolishing the rights of the owners of slaves." "The clause was therefore of the last importance to the safety and security of the Southern States, and could not be surrendered by them without endangering their whole property in slaves. The clause was accordingly adopted in the convention by the unanimous consent of the framers of it, a proof at once of its intrinsic and practical necessity." "The clause manifestly contem

plates the existence of a positive unqualified right on the part of the owner of the slave, which no State law or regulation can in any way regulate, control, qualify, or restrain." Judge Baldwin, in the case of Johnson v. Tompkins, and others, after referring to this provision, said: "Thus you see that the foundations of the Government are laid and rest on the right of property in slaves. The whole structure must fall by disturbing the cornerstone." Judge Story, 16 Peter 611, again, says: "Without it the Union could not have been formed." Judge McLean, on the authority of Chief-Justice Marshall, reiterated that without it "no Constitution could have been adopted." At Capon Springs, Virginia, June 28, 1851, Daniel Webster said: "I do not hesitate to say and repeat that if the Northern States refuse wilfully and deliberately to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain broken on one side is broken on all sides."

1

Writing to a committee of New York lawyers in 1851, Mr. Webster said: "In the North, the purpose of overturning the Government shows itself more clearly in resolutions

1 2 Curtis's Cons., 451; 2 Benton's Thirty Years' View, 773; 1 Stephens's War between the States, 202; 1 Rhodes's History of the United States, 18.

agreed to in voluntary assemblies of individuals, denouncing the laws of the land, and declaring a fixed intent to disobey them. I notice that in one of these meetings, holden lately in the very heart of New England, and said to have been very numerously attended, the members unanimously resolved That as God is our helper, we will not suffer any person charged with being a fugitive from labor to be taken from among us, and to this resolve we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.' These persons do not seem to have been aware that the purpose thus avowed by them is distinctly treasonable. If any law of the land be resisted by force of arms, or force of numbers, with a declared intent to resist the application of that law in all cases, this is levying war against the Government within the meaning of the Constitution, and is an act of treason, drawing after it all consequences of that offence." He conjured his fellow-citizens "to reject all such ideas as that disobedience to the laws is the path of patriotism, or treason to your country duty to God."

Slavery, as a domestic institution, was, at the time of the Declaration of Independence, common to all the colonies; at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, common to nearly all the States. Georgia gave Gen. Anthony Wayne of Pennsylvania, a rice plantation in testimony of her regard for deliverance from British domination, and his biographer records that at the end

of the war the General borrowed 4000 guineas in order "to stock his plantation with negroes.' In the life of Thomas Hazard, an anti-slavery pioneer in Rhode Island, it is said that a thousand slaves were held in the county where he lived, very many of them by his relatives, some of whom were Guinea slave-traders.

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In Mrs. Earle's Customs and Fashions in Old New England, it is stated that Rev. Peter Thatcher bought an Indian girl for ten pounds, and, a “very kindly gentleman and good Christian" as he was, “took a good walnut stick and beat her" until she promised to offend no more. Burdened in their consciences, the owners exchanged Indian slaves for negro slaves. A French refugee wrote home: "You may also here own negroes and negresses, and there is not a house in Boston, however small may be its means, that has not one or two." Mrs. Earle says: I have never seen in any Southern newspapers advertisements of negro sales that surpass in heartlessness and viciousness the advertisements of our New England papers of the 18th century. Negro children were sold by the pound as other merchandise." New Englanders were willing to buy slaves, in order that "the poor heathen might be brought up in a Christian land." One respectable elder in Newport, whence the slavers set sail, was in the habit of giving thanks in meeting, on the next Sunday, after the arrival of a slaver, "because a gracious overruling Providence had been pleased to bring