The constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the Fugitive Slave law is not a question to be determined solely by any single and simple provision of the fundamental law.

It presents a case where commentators and expounders must appeal to precedents and analogies, and to general principles respecting the nature of government and the object of all law.

We know, too, that in addition to the powerful influences of education and training, the general cast and structure of men’s minds predispose them to take one side or the other of great political and religious questions.

Natural biases operate like a law of gravitation to sway different minds in different directions.

It is a law that might be held constitutional by a bench of slaveholders, while it would be held unconstitutional by all the inhabitants of a free land.

My own opinion is, in view of the great principles of civil liberty out of which the constitution grew, and which it was designed to secure, that this law cannot be fairly and legitimately supported on constitutional grounds.

As for any arrogant or supercilious dictum, either that the law is constitutional or that it is not constitutional, unaccompanied by any reason or any reference, all reflecting men must regard it as sheer insolence, come from what quarter…

Even should the supreme court of the United States declare the law to be constitutional, then, though we must acknowledge their decision, as to the point decided, to be the law of the land, until it is set aside, yet, without any…

Do I expect that the members of that body will be more careful than the senators from Georgia and South Carolina to form their opinions without any regard to selfish considerations?

In the first place, I believe the constitution not only authorizes but requires a trial by jury, in the case of alleged fugitive slaves, when claimed in free states.

The constitution declares, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons,” “against unreasonable” “seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and…

Can a man be adjudged a slave; held, coerced, beaten as a slave; with all his powers and faculties of body and mind subdued and controlled as a slave’s, and yet possess or retain liberty?

If such a proceeding does not deprive a man of his freedom, by what means can he be deprived of it?

This imprisons him, and makes the man his keeper who is interested to make that imprisonment perpetual in himself, and descendible to his children, and his children’s children forever.

Is not perpetual imprisonment of the nature and substance of punishment,--of the severest punishment?

The constitution has provided that “cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted,” even for the perpetration of the worst of crimes; yet here is a case where the most cruel of punishments, or of privations, may be inflicted without…

And the argument is, that this form of punishment may constitutionally be inflicted, because it was so inconceivably atrocious and diabolical that the constitution did not prohibit it,--because the constitution only prohibited “cruel and…

Does any one say that a victim of this law has not been “deprived” of his liberty because he may sue for it, and possibly recover it, in the courts of the state to which he is carried?

Enslavement and liberty being incompatible, when he suffers the first, though but for an hour, he is deprived of the last.

The moment he should arrive within the limits of a slave state, that moment he would be in the same condition as three million other fellow-bondmen; and it would be just as rational to say that they have never been deprived of liberty as…

I affirm, then, that when a man in Massachusetts, who by the constitution of Massachusetts is free, is adjudged to be a slave, is transported as a slave, and held as a slave, in a southern state, though it be but for a single day, he is…

That very thing is done to him which the constitution says shall not be done but by a jury of his peers.

The slave, then, can be constitutionally and legally “delivered up” in no other way than “on claim,” by “suit.

And will any one be rash enough to say that a man ostensibly free,--free according to all legal presumption,--can be “delivered” over to bondage for life, without the intervention of “a court of justice”?

Could they have intended that the mere fact of claiming a man as a slave,--which claim might be made against a freeman as well as against a slave,--should be sufficient to deprive him of this ancient muniment of the subject’s liberty?