The Chicago Common Council and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850: An Address Read Before the Chicago Historical Society at a Special Meeting Held January 29, 1903 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Chicago Common Council and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850: An Address Read Before the Chicago Historical Society at a Special Meeting Held January 29, 1903

Justice Story, maintained that the law of Pennsylvania w-as unconstitutional, because it purported to punish as a pub lic offense against that State, the act of seizing and re moving a slave, which act the Constitution of the United States was designed to justify and uphold. This decision stated further that the right of a citizen of a slave-holding State to the recovery of his fugitive slave was a funda mental right granted by the Constitution. The purpose of the law was to guard this species of property against the doctrines prevailing in the non-slave-holding States, and to prevent intermeddling, obstruction, or abolition of the rights of slave owners. The Act of Feb. 12, 1793, was clearly constitutional in all of its provisions, and, with the exception of that part which conferred authority on State magistrates, was free from reasonable doubt or difficulty. The court entertained no difference of opinion upon the powers of State magistrates under the law. State magis trates might, it they chose, exercise the authority, unless prohibited by the State Legislatures. But the clause relat ing to fugitive slaves was found in the National Constitu tion and not in that of any State, and to insist that States were bound to provide means to carry into effect the duties of the National Government nowhere delegated to them, might well be deemed an unconstitutional exercise of the power of interpretation. The National Government is bound through its own proper departments to carry into effect the rights and duties imposed upon it by the Con stitution. The constitutional legislation of Congress super sedes that of the States upon the same subject.

In short, this decision placed the execution of the Act of 1793 in the hands of the general government and thereby left unimpaired the action of several States prohibiting State officers from executing it. Thus the legal machinery became inadequate for the execution of the law and with the increasing feeling at the North, the complaints of the South became constant.

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