Charles Sumner

And thus, by the letter of the Constitution, in harmony with the requirements of the Common Law, all such persons, when claimed by their masters, are entitled to Trial by Jury.

If its early boast, that there could be no slaves in England, fails to be true, this at least may be its pride,--that, according to its indisputable principles, the liberty of every man was placed under the guard of Trial by Jury.

By no urgency of force, by no device of process, could any person claimed as a slave be defrauded of this Trial.

In the case of process by the master, the watchful law secured to the fugitive the same protection.

In the case of seizure, the fugitive, reversing the proceedings, might institute process against his master, and appeal to a Court and Jury.

Whether the master proceeded by seizure, as he might, or by legal process, Trial by Jury, in a suit at Common Law, before one of the high courts of the realm, was equally secured.

Any person claimed as a fugitive slave might invoke this Trial as a sacred right.

By these various proceedings, all ending in Trial by Jury, Personal Liberty was guarded, even in the unrefined and barbarous days of the early Common Law.

Now, on principle and authority, a claim for the delivery of a fugitive slave is a suit at Common Law, and is embraced naturally and necessarily in this class of judicial proceedings.

Thus by this law we learn the nature of Trial by Jury, which, though secured, is not described by the Constitution; also what are Attainder, Habeas Corpus, and Impeachment, all technical terms of the Constitution, borrowed from the Common…

This conclusion needs no additional authority; but it receives curious illustration from the ancient records of the Common Law, so familiar and dear to the framers of the Constitution.

By these successive steps, sustained by judgments of the highest tribunal, it appears, as in a diagram, that the right of Trial by Jury is secured to the fugitive from service.

This would give a judge the sole power of deciding the right of property the master claims in his slave, instead of trying that right by a jury, as prescribed by the Constitution.

These proceedings determine on the one side the question of Property, and on the other the sacred question of Personal Liberty in its most transcendent form,--Liberty not merely for a day or a year, but for life, and the Liberty of…

But if it may, so overwhelming is the claim of justice, it MUST.

If the language of the Constitution were open to doubt, which it is not, still all the presumptions of law, all the leanings to Freedom, all the suggestions of justice, plead angel-tongued for this right.

To me, Sir, regarding this matter in the light of the Common Law and in the blaze of free institutions, it has always seemed impossible to arrive at any other conclusion.

Since on the one side there is a claim of property, and on the other of liberty, both property and liberty are involved in the issue.

Admitting, for the moment, that Congress is intrusted with power over this subject, which truth disowns, still the Act is again radically unconstitutional from its denial of Trial by Jury in a question of Personal Liberty and a suit at…

A weapon so terrible to Personal Liberty the Nation has no power to grasp.

It is a sword, whose handle is at the National Capital, and whose point is everywhere in the States.

The true principles of our Political System, the history of the National Convention, the natural interpretation of the Constitution, all teach that this Act is a usurpation by Congress of powers that do not belong to it, and an infraction…

Compelling the National Government to stretch its Briarean arms into the Free States for the sake of Slavery, you show openly how it may stretch these same hundred giant arms into the Slave States for the sake of Freedom.

In the present fatal overthrow of State Rights you teach a lesson which may return to plague the teacher.

And here, let me say, is the only security for Slavery in the Slave States, as for Freedom in the Free States.