20 Southern and 7 Northern Whigs; and the nays being 21 Northern and 10 Southern Democrats, and 29 Northern and 1 Southern Whig and 3 Free-soilers.

Not until the last of September did this session of Congress, beginning in December, 1849, close. Members returned to their constituents, but not to pacify the general discontent. Nor was the short vacation one of perfect quiet to the President. He was well aware that the course he had felt it his duty to pursue had divided him from many of his friends, and had at least broken the general confidence the Whigs of the North had reposed in him when he entered the Presidential office. He had been known in New York especially as anti-slavery in his sentiments; and even at the time of accepting the nomination for the Vice-Presidency, in 1848, he had been restrained by more politic friends from the unnecessary revelation of his strong sentiments and opinions against slavery. But he had now signed the Fugitive Slave Law, and it appeared certain that he was going to carry out the provisions of that law so far as it was incumbent upon him to do so. And why not that as well as other laws of the land?

THE CONSTITUTION AND THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW-A REVIEW-MR. FILLMORE SUSTAINED THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH — THE QUESTION OF

TH

RESPONSIBILITY.

HE fourth article of the Constitution of the United States makes provision for the pursuit, capture, and return of slaves, fugitives from service in other States. This provision of the Constitution had been set forth in the "Ordinance of 1787" under the Continental Congress for organizing the Northwestern Territory. In that ordinance it was also provided that slavery should forever be prohibited from that Territory. Between the friends of slavery and the Free-soilers of that day there was no contest. The question of slavery was mainly a matter of friendly adjustment and accommodation between the section where slavery did not exist, and could not flourish, and the Southern States and territory where it did exist, and where it was held to be desirable to continue it.

The ordinance shutting slavery from the Northwestern Territory had with it the accommodating provision for the return of fugitives from service. With this arrangement the legislation was unanimous, although in the southern part of this Territory slave

holders did for a time contend for what they claimed as a right to carry slave labor. The provision in the Constitution, about the same time, for the rendition of slaves flying to freedom in non-slaveholding territory, was a unanimous provision. The necessities of that day, the necessities for a government, were paramount, and slavery was not a matter of unfriendly conflict. There was indeed no great divergence in the sentiments of public men throughout the original States on the subject. Both Abolitionism and slave aggression and domination were gradual growths of after times.

In the winter of 1792, or the spring of 1793, Congress passed an act, at the suggestion of President Washington, for making the provision in the Constitution for the return of fugitive slaves effective. The following is the part of the act of 1793 referring to fugitive slaves :

"That when a person held to labor in any of the United States, or in either of the Territories on the northwest or south of Ohio, under the laws thereof, shall escape into any other of said States or Territories, the person to whom such labor is due, his agent or attorney, is hereby empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from labor, and to take him or her before any Judge of the Circuit or District Courts of the United States, residing or being within the State, or before any Magistrate of a county, city, or town corporate, wherein such seizure or arrest shall be made, and upon proof to the satisfaction of such Judge or Magistrate, either by oral testimony, or affidavit taken before and certified by a Magistrate of any such State or Territory, that the person so seized and arrested, doth, under the laws of the State or Territory from which he

or she fled, owe service to the person claiming him or her, it shall be the duty of such Judge or Magistrate to give a certificate thereof to such claimant, his agent or attorney, which shall be sufficient warrant for removing the said fugitive from labor to the State or Territory from which he or she fled."

This act was, of course, the interpretation then put upon the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution. In the Senate there was no division, it seems, on this act, and in the House but seven votes were recorded against it, there being no division of the parts of the bill, or no distinction in voting on the part providing for fugitives from justice and those from servitude. The penal section to this act of 1793 reads as follows:

"That any person who shall knowingly and willfully obstruct or hinder such claimant, his agent or attorney, 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 person 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 penalty may be recovered by and for the benefit of such claimant, by action of debt in any court proper to try the 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."

The States took up the matter in the spirit of Congress, and the State and United States Courts gave their decisions in favor of sustaining the law,

and much liberality was everywhere displayed on the subject. Under this act affairs were conducted amicably in the main between the States until after the slave agitation began in 1835. Pennsylvania did not negative her former course in this matter until the spring of 1847, and not then till Mr. Calhoun had brought into Congress his slavery resolutions of that year. This State had acted very liberally and openly about the return of slaves; but now she refused the aid of her officers and courts, the use of her jails, and in every way rejected all overtures for the protection of the right of ownership in people escaping to her borders from servitude. Other States had, up to the beginning of the slavery agitation, been equally liberal, some of them more so than Pennsylvania, and all of them like that State, long before the birth of Mr. Clay's "Omnibus Bill," had ignored their former course, and' ceased to give much heed to demands from the South, and some of them even fell to protecting and fostering runaways. As late as 1838 William H. Seward, then a candidate in opposition to William L. Marcy for Governor of New York, made the following statement in answer to questions from an anti-slavery organization of that State:

"But, gentlemen, being desirous to be entirely candid in this communication, it is proper I should add that I am not convinced it would be either wise, expedient, or humane to declare to our fellow-citizens of the Southern and South-western States that if they travel to or from, or pass through the State of New York, they shall not bring with them the attendants whom custom, or educa