OCR Text |
Show 296 States, and both judiciaries, State and federal, were to the same effect. The act was con tinua.lly enforced, and the courts decided that this right of the owner to cize his slave was just as large in the free State to which he had fled as in the slave State from which he bad run awaythat he might seize, by night as well as by day, on Sunday as well as other days, and also in a house, provided 110 breach of tho peace was committed. The penal secLion in the bill was clear and heavy, and went upon tho grou11d of tho absolute right of the master to scjzc his slave uy his owu authority wherever he saw him, and tbe criminality of any ob trucLiou or resistance in the exorcise of that right. It was in those words : ~~ Tllat any person who shaH knowingly and wilfully obstruct or biudcr such claimant, his agent or aLtorney, in so seizing or arresting such fugitive from labor, or shall rescue such fugitive from such claimant, his agent or attorney, when so arrested pursuant to the authority herein given or declared ; or shall harbor, or conceal such persons after notice that he or she was a fugitive from labor as aforesaid, shall, for either of the said offenses forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred dollars, which pen-' alty may be recovered by and for the benefit of such claimant, by action of debt in any court proper to try tho same, saving, moreover, to the person claiming such labor or service his right of action for or on account of the said injuries, or either of them." State officers, the magistrates and judges, though not bound to act under the law of Congress, yet did so; and State jails, though not obligatory under a federal law, were freely used for the recaptured fugitives. This continued till a late day in most of the free States-in all of them until after the Congress of the U uited States engaged in the slavery agitation-and in the great State of Pennsylvania until the 20th March, 184 7 ; ibis is to say, until a month after Mr Oalhoun brought into the Senate the 297 slavery resolutions, st i gmnli~cd by ".Mr. Denton as "firebrand" at tlle moment of their introduction, and which arc since involving tho Union i11 conflngmtion. rrhrn Pennsylvania passed the law forl>id<ling her judicial authoritirs to tnke cognizance of auy fugitive slave case-granted a habeas corpus remedy to any fugitives arrestcd-clcnying the n.'e of her jails to confine any one, and repealing the six month!'>' slave sojourning law of l 7 80. Some years before the passage of this harsh act, and before the slavery agitation had cummen ·ed in Congress, to wit, 182G (which was nine years before the commencement of the agitation) P enn. ylvania had pa.\ eel a most li bernl law of her own, done upon the request of .Maryland, to aid the recovery of fugitive slaves. It was entitled "An Act to giue c>f!ect to the Constitution of the United Stales 1·n reclaiming fugitives fr·ont }ustice." Such has uccn the just and generous conduct of .Pennsylvania toward the slave States until up to the passiug tho harsh act of 1847. ITer legal right to pass that act is admi tted ; her magistrates were not bound to act under the federal law-her jails were not liable to be used for federal purposes. 'l'he sojonrniug law of 1780 was her own, and she bad a right to repeal it. But the whole act of 1847 was the exercise of a mere right, against the comity which is due to states united under a common head, against moral and social duty, against high national policy, ngainst the spirit in which the Constitution was made, against her own previous conduct for sixty years, and injurious and irritating to the people of the slave States, and part of it unconstitutional. The denial of the intervention of her judicial officers, and the use of her prisons, though an inconvenience, was not insurmountable, and might be remedied by Congress; the repeal of the act of 1780 was the radical injury, and for which there was no remedy in federal legislation. That act was passed before the adoption of the Constitu- |