a greater power over slave property, or which entitles property of that kind to less protection than property of any other description. The only power conferred is the power coupled with the duty of guarding and protecting the owner in his rights."

These assertions of the Chief Justice were based upon the provisions of the Constitution which forbade Congress to prohibit, prior to 1808, the importation of slaves, and which provided that "no person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, 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." As "by the laws thereof" slavery might exist in any state. and as there was reserved to the states, or to the people, the powers not delegated by the Constitution to the United States, and as no power was delegated to the United States to interfere with the state laws favoring slavery, it followed that the United States could do nothing to prohibit slavery in any state. And it followed that, as by the Constitution the fugitive slave must be delivered up, Congress, which had power "to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution all powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States," had power to make the Fugitive Slave Law. It also followed that the general gov ernment under the Constitution had no power to mitigate the institution of slavery in the states, since no such powers were delegated to it, but did have power to make the condition of the slave more onerous and hopeless, since the power to pass laws to cause him to be delivered up was delegated to it. Because it was so, the Abolitionists were sometimes moved to say that the Constitution was a "covenant with Death and an agreement with Hell."

Indeed, the provision in the Constitution for the delivering up of fugitive slaves escaping from one state into another, from a state where, by the laws thereof, he was lawfully a slave to a state where, by the laws thereof, he was lawfully free, was one of the strongest commendations of the instru ment to the slave-owners. It gave additional security and protection to their property in slaves. It was a guarantee of

DENIAL OF RIGHTS TO THE NEGRO.

181 a right of property in fugitive slaves wherever they might be found in the Union.

Charles C. Pinckney said, in the convention of South Carolina, in advocating the ratification of the Constitution, “We have obtained the right to recover our slaves in whatever part of America they may take refuge; which is a right we had not before." It is significant that the Articles of Confederation said nothing upon the subject.

I venture to quote still further from the same opinion of Chief Justice Taney. He was contending for the proposition that the negro could not be a citizen of the United States, and that he was not within the meaning or intent of any of the provisions of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, or of the Constitution, respecting citizenship or liberty. Had he confined his remarks to the slave instead of extending them to all persons of African descent, the denunciation of which he was the object, from 1857 down to our own times, would probably have been less violent.

"It is difficult," he said, "at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted. They had more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, which no one thought of disputing, or supposed to be open to dispute; and men in every grade and position in society daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern, without doubting for a moment the correctness of this opinion."

Hear Mr. Madison, in the forty-third number of "The Federalist." He is speaking of possible domestic violence, and referring to that provision of the Constitution which requires

the United States to guarantee to every state in the Union a republican form of government, and to protect it from invasion and domestic violence. He says a minority of citizens may become a majority of persons by accessions from aliens and others not admitted to suffrage, and adds:

"I take no notice of an unhappy species of population (meaning slaves) abounding in some of the states, who, during the calm of regular government, are sunk below the level of men; but who, in the tempestuous scenes of civil violence, may emerge into the human character, and give a superiority of strength to any party with which they may associate themselves."

This is a remarkable paragraph, at once a description of the slave as he was, and a prophecy of what he was to become.

We may at least believe that at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the idea had not entered the minds of the people that the new government would have anything to do with slavery, except to suppress the slave-trade after 1808, and to compel the return of fugitive slaves.1

At the first Congress the Pennsylvania Society for promot ing the Abolition of Slavery presented a petition asking that slavery be abolished. This petition was signed by Benjamin Franklin as president of the society.

Congress replied as follows: "That the Congress have no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them in any of the states; it remaining with the several states alone to provide any regulations therein which humanity and true policy may require." The same page of Benton's "Abridgment of the Debates of Congress" which records this reply of Congress, also records the death of Benjamin Franklin. Consistent to the end, this steadfast friend of humanity pauses before the open portals of death to knock in behalf of the slave on the portals of freedom. The Quakers, and others, presented similar petitions to this and subsequent sessions of Congress, but it never receded from its first reply.

1 A Boston newspaper, a few days after Washington's first inauguration, reminded the Anti-Federalists that, under the new Constitution, two runaway negro boys had been apprehended in that city and returned to their masters.

FIRST FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW.

183

In 1793, the first Fugitive Slave Law was passed. About the time of the adoption of the Constitution a colored man was seized by several persons in Pennsylvania, and forcibly carried into Virginia with intent to enslave him. The laws of Pennsylvania made this act a crime, and the kidnappers were indicted. But they fled to Virginia and the governor of the latter state refused to surrender them. The correspondence between the governors, and the papers relating to the case, were transmitted to President Washington by the governor of Pennsylvania with the inquiry how the constitutional provision respecting fugitives from justice could be made effective. The President laid the matter before Congress. The result was that bills with respect to fugitives from justice and fugitives from slavery were passed. No debate occurred in the House. The Senate at that time sat with closed doors, and whether any debate occurred there is not known. Probably there was none, as the propriety of giving effect to the constitutional provision could not well be contested. The Fugitive Slave Bill did not attract public attention till long afterwards. It provided that the owner of the fugitive might seize him and take him before any federal judge, or before any local magistrate of the state, and the magistrate should order that he be delivered up to his master, if satisfied that the master's claim was valid. Afterwards, when public sentiment became aroused, it was objected that the state officer was enjoined by the United States to perform certain duties, and finally, in 1842, the Supreme Court of the United States substantially held that Congress had no power to impose or require any official service of a state officer.1 Several states thereupon passed acts, forbidding, under severe penalties, the rendition by their officers of the services required by this act, and providing that the fugitive slave should have the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus and of trial by jury.

It was the hope of benevolent men in the earlier years of the government that the states would ultimately abolish slavery of their own accord. The Northern States did this: Vermont by her first Constitution in 1777, Massachusetts in 1780, and New Hampshire in 1783. Gradual abolition was

1 Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 16 Peters, 539.

ordained by Pennsylvania in 1780, by Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784, by New York in 1799, and New Jersey in 1804. Slavery wholly ended in New York July 4, 1827.

Societies to promote gradual abolition were formed in several of these states near the close of the last century. It was hoped that the same influences would prevail in the Southern States. But the sudden and enormous development of the production of cotton made slave labor so profitable that selfishness prevailed over humanity.

In 1816 the American Colonization Society was formed. Its object was to promote emancipation by colonizing the free blacks in some distant colony, and to remove the free blacks from the slave states. The Virginia Legislature in 1816 commended the movement to the favor of the general government. It was warmly supported by Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Clay, and other eminent men at the South, and had branches in every northern state. Under its patronage was formed the colony, now the Republic of Liberia, on the western coast of Africa. The society still exists, its present purpose being to help sustain the feeble but interesting Liberian Republic. Its influence in abolishing slavery was the indirect one of leading many of its members through the gate of colonization into the fold of the abolition party.

Of the thirteen original states of the Union seven became free and six slave states. Care seems to have been taken to admit new states in pairs, one free and one slave. Thus, Kentucky and Vermont, Tennessee and Ohio, came in nearly together. Louisiana, carved from the French purchase, restored equality. Then Mississippi and Indiana, Alabama and Illinois, still maintained the equilibrium. Not till Missouri in 1818 applied to be admitted as a slave state was the subject of slavery much discussed, and then finally Maine was admitted as the companion state. Afterwards Arkansas and Michigan, Florida and Iowa, were received in pairs, one slave and the other free.

Before the Constitution was adopted, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, and South Carolina ceded to the United States the large tracts of western lands to which they respectively made claim. These cessions were made, both to