The whole subject is left to stand on a clause which, whatever its meaning otherwise, plainly on its face is only a compact, and not a grant of power.
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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The genius of the Common Law, to which our ancestors were devoted, cried out against any such concession.
Whatever the real meaning of the clause in other respects, plainly it is a compact, with a prohibition on the States, conferring no power on the nation.
Except under express obligations of treaty, no nation is bound to surrender fugitives.
By express compact alone could this be secured.
Thus this provision is a compact in language, a compact in nature, and a compact in its whole history; as we have already seen, it is a compact according to the intentions of our fathers and the genius of our institutions.
This compact, made in the unequivocal language of a barbarous age, has long since ceased to exist; and now, in our own day, Russia disdains to own a slave.
But this compact, like its Russian prototype, long since ceased to exist.
But if these men be citizen soldiers fighting for their country, and it is proposed to cheat them of their votes by barefaced fraud, I know no language to depict the despicable and most intolerable enormity of the offence.
Unquestionably the fugitive clause of the Constitution, whether applicable to fugitive slaves or not, was never intended to confer power upon Congress, but was simply a compact, to receive such interpretation as the States where it was…
Men who make up their minds to sustain Slavery stick at nothing.
I have looked in vain among the powers delegated to Congress by the Constitution for any general authority to that body to legislate on this subject.
It certainly is not contained in any express grant of power, and it does not appear to be embraced in the general grant of incidental powers contained in the last clause of the Constitution relative to the powers of Congress.
If willing to forge chains, they will not hesitate to forge votes.
Webster gave his support to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; but, whatever may have been his vote, so far as his personal authority could go, he condemned the Act as unconstitutional.
If ready to enslave their fellow-men, they will not hesitate to cheat soldiers.
I have always thought that the Constitution addressed itself to the Legislatures of the States, or to the States themselves.
It says that those persons escaping to other States ‘shall be delivered up,’ and I confess I have always been of the opinion that it was an injunction upon the States themselves.
The birth is the new life of our country, born to-day into assured freedom, with all its attendant glory.
When it is said that a person escaping into another State, and coming, therefore, within the jurisdiction of that State, shall be delivered up, it seems to me the import of the clause is, that the State itself, in obedience to the…
Under the Constitution, each State of itself ought to provide for the rendition of all fugitives from labor to their masters.
And yet, in the face of all authority, and in defiance of reason, Congress assumed this power.
It was done at the demand of Slavery, and for the protection of Slavery.
Of course, such an assumption of undelegated power was a usurpation at the time, and is a usurpation still,--doubly hateful, when it is considered that it is a usurpation in the name of Slavery.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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