In both the cases supposed, such a doctrine would take away a man’s rights in the most odious manner, by taking away the legitimate and constitutional means of defending them.

If attachment on mesne process, if even indictment by the grand inquest for the county, does not deprive a man of his right to a trial by jury, how can so great a natural wrong be constitutionally inflicted by the warrant of a commissioner?

But to the argument, that the constitution and the law of 1850 apply only to slaves, and that because slaves are not parties to the constitution they are not under its protection, and so not included in the provision for jury trial, there…

The right, therefore, is not made to depend upon the classes of persons on trial, but upon the nature of the charge brought against them.

The constitution does not say that freemen shall be tried in one way and slaves in another; but its language is, “all crimes,” and “all criminal prosecutions;” so that it embraces every person who is prosecuted, whether free or slave…

If an Englishman or a Frenchman were to be tried here for murder, how would the whole world deride the suggestion that he should not have a jury trial because he is a foreigner,--because he is not one of the “people,” and so not a party to…

The constitution does not care who the parties are,--man, woman, bond or free,--it is all the same.

No reason can be assigned why a slave is not as much under the protection of a constitution made for the “people,” as under the protection of a law made for the “people.” Yet here, even in the case of a presumptive slave, a right was…

I have here been combating the argument, that because the Fugitive Slave law is aimed at slaves, no freeman has any ground of complaint against it, even though he should be converted into a chattel under it.

He must console himself under the doom of interminable bondage, with the patriotic and pious reflection that he is only suffering, as an exception, to prove the general excellence of the law; and he must leave this consolation also to his…

This argument I hold to be eminently sophistical and cruelly oppressive.

The presumption in every free state being, that all men within its borders are free, let every such state give the trial by jury, in all cases in which personal liberty is involved, to every one who shall ask for it, and who has not once…

If the occasional subjection of a freeman instead of a slave, to all the horrors of bondage, constitutes no valid objection to the United States law, then, surely, the occasional enfranchisement of a slave from a bondage that was always…

If this Fugitive Slave law continues for a single year, I hope every free state will pass a law inflicting condign punishment upon every man who directly or indirectly assists in sending any man into southern bondage, unless he can prove…

The only point which a republican judge or citizen can, with decency, make on this subject is, Does the constitution forbid, prohibit, deny, such trial?--for, if it does not, then the jury should be granted of course.

It is the saddest of spectacles; it argues the most mournful degeneracy, to see the children at this early day, from grovelling notions of ambition and of wealth, abandoning those noble principles of freedom for which their fathers so…

Wherever the constitution allows the trial by jury, in a matter of human liberty, in Heaven’s name let us have it.

The enemy of the trial by jury, wherever human liberty is concerned, is the enemy of human liberty and of the human race.

Thus, when the law proposed, not to appropriate a man’s property, but merely to enable his creditors to receive it in payment of their debts, the jury trial was secured to him; but here, where the direct purpose is to strip a man of his…

It may be inconvenient for a Texan claimant to prove his right to an alleged fugitive in Massachusetts; but it will be indefinitely more inconvenient for a citizen of Massachusetts to prove his freedom in Texas.

What Judge Story says respecting the right of all persons who are accused of crime to be tried by a “jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed,” applies with full force to a trial for liberty.

And why should the alleged fugitive be treated less mercifully than the alleged felon?

The law is unspeakably rigorous in the case of an alleged fugitive, but softens into mercy over an alleged pirate or murderer.

But if a freemen is carried away, a grievous and intolerable wrong is done; a wound is inflicted which mortal medicaments cannot heal, nor the longest continued punishment of the malefactor ever expiate.

By transferring the trial to the place of the claimant’s domicile, an effective, and, as it seems to me, a most iniquitous advantage is given him, in regard to evidence, while the respondent is subjected to cruel disabilities.