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Show 238 DESPO'rlSJ\l ginia, New York, Massachusetts, and Conn.ccti~nt,) had also provided "that every pcrsoll: esc.aping mto the same from whom labor or serviCe lS lawfully claimed i;t any one of the original states, such fugitive may be Ia:vfull>: returned, and co~lVcy:d. t~ the person claimtng l11s or her labor as aforesaid. Guided evidently by this precedent, Butler proposed, and the convcntion-m comphance, as :vc may reasonably conjecture, with an understandmg. come to out of doors-adopted without debat? or d1ssent an independent proposition in the followmg terms: "If any person bound to service or labor in any of the United States shall escape into another state,_ he or she shall not be discharged from such sc_rviCe or labor in consequence of any regulations subststi.ng 111 the state to which they escape, but sha ll be delivered up to the person justly claiming t heir scrv1cc o r labor." 'fhe committee on style, appomted to revise and arrange all t he articles agreed on, proposed to amend this one as follows: "No person. Leg.ally held to service or labor in one state, c~capmg 1~1to another, shall, in consequence of regulat!ons subsist: ing therein, be discharged from su~h service or labor, but shall be delivered up on cla1m of the party to whom such service or labor may be due ;" b?t, before its final adoption, the phraseology was stdl further altered, and it was brought mto the ~hape m which it now stands-in compliance, as 1\fadJson tells us with the wish of some who thought the word legally equivocal, and f:;tvoring the idea that slavery was legal in a moral pomt of v1~w. . Wholly apart from any application of tillS clause to the case of runaway slaves, there was am~le rna~ ter for it to operate upon, not only in appren~ICes aJ~l minor children to whose labor the father has a leg. riaht but in those indented servants who had conshtu;::, tcJ, during the whole of the c.olonial ti~cs, S? 001~~ siderablc a part of the populatiOn_, ~spcctnll~ 10 ~ nMidJic States, am.l whom, as their un~or~atwn, be terrupted by the war, was again begmnwg to IN AMERICA, 239 resumed, the convention might reasonably have expected soon to become as numerous as ever. As applying to apprentices, children, and indented servants, the article in quc;:;tion confers a right in which the citize~1~ of a ll the states may share; viewed as a prov1s1on for the surrender of runaway slaves, it as:sumcs an unequal and exclusive character, conferring a very invidious power on the citizens of a part only of the states-a character not to be found in any other article of the Federal constitution, and wholly incompatible with its whole spirit. 'l'hc simple state of the fact seems then to be this. A clause was in::;ertcd into the constitution perfectly appropriate though there had not been a slave in the Union, and which may very properly stand there after slavery shall be completely abolished, as it was the general expectation in t he convention that it soon would be. But in framing this clause, terms were us~d sufficiently comprehensive to enable the courts, if so disposed, constructively to include under it, during the temporary existence of slavery, the case of runaway slaves-provided, the courts should be of opil)ion that in the states whence the fugitives had lied, slavery existed not merely as a fact, but "under the laws thereof." In this Clause, so much vaunted as a Federal recognition and indorsement of the legality of slavery, not the slig htest reference even to the mere fact of its existence can be found, except by first taking for granted the very point which it is so often c1ted to prove, viz., that slavery did and does exist in the states by virtue of law. (See Appetuli.'C.) The t hree clauses of the Federal constitution above considered are the only portions of that instrument wluch have ever been set up as giving any sanction to slavery. But, so ·far from finding in t hese clauses any such sanction, we find, on t he contrary, evidence of a fixed determination in the constitution not to teld it. They contain no indorsement of the slave aws of t~e states ; no recognition of slavery as a |