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Show 302 LlllERTY AND SLAVERY. it is precisely the Fugitive Slave Law-that g1·cat constitutional guarantee of our rightswhich the people of the South are, as one man, the most inflexibly determined to maintain. We arc prepared, and we shall accordingly proceed, to show that, in this fearful conflict, the great leaders of abolitionism-the Chases, the Sowards, and the Sumners, of the day-arc waging a fierce, bitter, and relentless warfare against the Constitution of their country. §I. llfr. Seward's attack on the Constitution of his country. There is one thing which Mr. Seward's reasoning ovcrlooks,-namely, that he has taken an oath to support the Constitution of the U nitcd States. We shall not lose sight of this fact, nor permit him to obscure it by his special pleadings and mystifications; since it serves to show that while, in the name of a "higher law," he denounces the Constitution of his country, he at the same time commits a most flagrant outrage against that higher law itself. The clause of the Constitution which Mr. Scwa1·d denounces is as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, TilE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 303 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." • This clause, as Mr. Seward contemptuously says, is "from the Constitution of the United States in 1787." lie knows of only one other compact like this "in diplomatic history;" and that was made between despotic powers "in the year of grace 902, in the period called the Dm·k Ages." l3ut whether this compact made by the fathers of the Republic, or the sayings and doings of Mr. Seward in regard to it, are the more worthy of the Dark Ages, it is not for him alone to determine. " 'rho law of nature," says he, " disavows such compacts; the law of nature, written on the hearts and consciences of freemen, repudiates them." If this be so, then it certainly follows that in founding states no such compacts should be formed. For, as Mr. Seward says, "when we are founding states, all these laws must be brought to the standard of the laws of God, and must be tried by that standard, and must stand or fall by it." This is true, we repent; but the Senator who uttered this truth was not founding states or forming a consti.- |