WRONG AND UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF FUGITIVE SLAVE ACTS.

REPORT IN THE SENATE OF THE COMMITTEE ON SLAVERY AND FREEDMEN, FEBRUARY 29, 1864.

FEBRUARY 29, 1864, Mr. Sumner reported from the Committee on Slavery and Freedmen a bill to repeal all acts for the rendition of fugitive slaves. Accompanying this bill was the following report, of which ten thousand extra copies were ordered to be printed for the use of the Senate, together with the views of the minority, by Mr. Buckalew.

The debate on this subject, and the final repeal of all Fugitive Slave Acts, appear at a later date.1

THE Select Committee on Slavery and the Treatment of Freedmen, to whom were referred sundry petitions asking for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and also asking for the repeal of all acts for the rendition of fugitive slaves, have had the same under consideration, and ask leave to make the following report.

WO Fugitive Slave Acts still exist unrepealed on

TW

our statute-book. The first, dated as long ago as 1793, was preceded by an official correspondence, supposed to show necessity for legislation.2 The second, belonging to the compromises of 1850, was introduced by a report from Mr. Butler, of South Carolina, at that time Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the Sen1 Post, pp. 403–418.

2 American State Papers, Miscellaneous, Vol. I. pp. 38-43.

ate. In proposing the repeal of all legislation on the subject, it seems not improper to imitate the latter precedent by a report assigning briefly the reasons governing the Committee.

RELATION BETWEEN SLAVERY AND THE FUGITIVE

SLAVE ACTS.

THESE Acts may be viewed as part of the system of Slavery, and therefore obnoxious to the judgment which Civilization is accumulating against this Barbarism; or they may be viewed as independent agencies. But it is difficult to consider them in the latter character alone; for if Slavery be the offence which it doubtless is, then must it infect all the agencies it employs. Especially at this moment, when, by common consent, Slavery is recognized as the origin and life of the Rebellion, must all its agencies be regarded with more than ordinary repugnance.

If in time of peace all Fugitive Slave Acts were offensive, as requiring what humanity and religion both condemn, they must at this moment be still more offensive, when Slavery, in whose behalf they were made, has risen in arms against the National Government. It is bad enough, at any time, to thrust an escaped slave back into bondage: it is absurd to thrust him back at a moment when Slavery is rallying all its forces for the conflict it has madly challenged. The crime of such a transaction is not diminished by its absurdity. A slave with courage and address to escape from his master has the qualities needed for a soldier of Freedom; but existing statutes require his arrest and sentence to bondage.

1 Senate Reports, 31st Cong. 1st Sess., No. 12.

In annulling these statutes, Congress simply withdraws an irrational support from Slavery. It does nothing against Slavery, but merely refuses to do anything for it. In this respect the present proposition differs from all preceding measures of Abolition, as refusal to help an offender on the highway differs from an attempt to take his life.

And yet it cannot be doubted that the withdrawal of Congressional support must contribute effectively to the abolition of Slavery: not that, at the present moment, Congressional support is of any considerable value, but because its withdrawal would be an encouragement to that universal public opinion which must soon sweep this Barbarism from our country. It is one of the felicities of our present position, that by repealing all acts. for the restitution of slaves we may hasten the happy day of Freedom and of Peace.

Regarding this question in association with the broader question of Universal Emancipation, we find that every sentiment or reason or argument for the latter pleads for the repeal of these obnoxious statutes, but that the difficulties sometimes supposed to beset Emancipation do not touch the proposed repeal, so that we might well insist upon the latter, even if we hesitated. with regard to the former. The Committee find new motive to the recommendation they now make, when they see how important its adoption must be in securing the extinction of Slavery.

It is not enough to consider the proposed measure in its relations to Emancipation. Even if Congress be not ready to make an end of Slavery, it cannot hesitate to make an end of all Fugitive Slave Acts. Against the latter there are cumulative arguments of Constitutional

Law and of duty, beyond any to be arrayed against Slavery itself. A man may even support Slavery, and yet reject the Fugitive Slave Acts.

THE FUGITIVE CLAUSE IN THE CONSTITUTION, AND THE RULES FOR ITS INTERPRETATION.

THESE Acts profess to be founded upon certain words of the Constitution. On this account we must consider these words with a certain degree of care. They are as follows.

"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."1

John Quincy Adams has already remarked that in this much debated clause the laws of grammar are violated in order to assert the claim of property in man; for the verb "shall be delivered up" has for nominative "no person," and thus the grammatical interpretation actually forbids the rendition. It is on this jumble and muddle of words that a superstructure of wrong is built. Even bad grammar may be disregarded, especially in behalf of human rights; but it is worthy of remark, that, in this clause of the Constitution, an outrage on human rights was begun by an outrage on language.

Assuming that the clause is not invalidated by bad grammar, it is often insisted, and here the Committee concur, that, according to authoritative rules of inter

pretation, it cannot be considered applicable to fugitive slaves; since, whatever the intention of its authors, no words were employed positively describing fugitive slaves and nobody else. Obviously, this clause, on its face, is applicable to apprentices, and it is known historically that under it apprentices have been delivered up on the claim of the party to whom "such service or labor" was due. It is therefore only by discarding its primary signification, and adopting a secondary signification, that it can be made to embrace fugitive slaves. On any common occasion, not involving a question of human rights, such secondary signification might be supplied by intendment; but it cannot be supplied to limit or deny human rights, especially to defeat Liberty, without a violation of fundamental rules which constitute the glory of the law.

This principle is common to every system of civilized jurisprudence; but it has been nowhere expressed with more force than in the maxims of the Common Law and the decisions of its courts. It entered into the remarkable argument of Granville Sharp, which preceded the judgment extorted from Lord Mansfield, and led him to exclaim, in words strictly applicable to the Constitution of the United States, "The word slaves, or anything that can justify the enslaving of others, is not to be found, God be thanked," in the British Constitution. It entered into the judgment pronounced at last by Lord Mansfield, under the benevolent pressure of Granville Sharp, in the renowned Somerset case, where this great magistrate grandly declared that Slavery could not exist in England. His words cannot be too often quoted as an illustration of the true rule of interpretation. "The

1 Hoare's Memoirs of Sharp, p. 38.