A slight examination will show prevailing perversions with regard to
the origin and history of this clause. Not content with imparting to it
a meaning which it cannot bear, the partisans of Slavery have given to
this clause an origin and history having no foundation in truth.
It is common to assert that the clause was intended to remove or
counteract some difficulty which had occurred anterior to the
Convention. But there is no evidence of any such difficulty. There was
no complaint. Not a single voice was raised in advance to ask any such
security.
It is also asserted, with peculiar confidence, that this clause,
interpreted to require the rendition of fugitive slaves, constituted
one of the original compromises of the Constitution, without which
the Union could not have been formed. This pretension makes an
asserted stipulation for the rendition of fugitive slaves one of the
corner-stones of the Union. To this discreditable imputation upon the
fathers of the Republic the Supreme Court seems to have lent sanction,
when it declared, in the famous Prigg case, not only that “the object
of this clause was to secure to the citizens of the slaveholding States
the complete right and title of ownership in their slaves _as property_
in every State in the Union into which they might escape,” but that
“the full recognition of this right and title … was so vital to the
preservation of their domestic interests and institutions, that it
cannot be doubted _that it constituted a fundamental article, without
the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed_.”[332]
Mark the way in which this extraordinary statement is ushered in,--“It
cannot be doubted”! But it is doubted, and more too. Chief Justice
Taney, at a later day, put forth the statement, that, during the
Revolution, it was an accepted truth that colored men “had no rights
which the white man was bound to respect,”[333]--and this statement
was said to stand on authentic history; but it is now exploded, and
the other statement must share the same fate. A careful inquiry shows
that it is utterly without support in the records of the Convention,
where the real compromises are revealed; nor is there a single
contemporary pamphlet, speech, article, or published letter, out of
which any such thing can be inferred. Surely, had this provision been
of such controlling importance, it could not have escaped notice, at
least, in the “Federalist,” when its writers undertook to describe and
group the powers of Congress “which provide for the harmony and proper
intercourse among the States”;[334] but the “Federalist” is entirely
silent with regard to it. And yet we are gravely told “it cannot be
doubted” that this provision “constituted a fundamental article,
without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed.”
Frequent repetition has caused the common belief that this was history,
instead of fable.
The actual compromises of the Constitution are well known. They were
three in number. One established the equality of all the States in
the Union, by securing equal representation in the Senate for the
small States and large States. Another allowed representatives to the
Slave States according to the whole number of free persons and “three
fifths of all other persons,” in consideration that direct taxes
should be apportioned in the same way. Another was the toleration
of the slave-trade for twenty years, in consideration of commercial
concessions to the “Eastern members.” Such are the actual compromises
of the Constitution, with regard to which there is evidence. But
imagination or falsehood is the only authority for adding the rendition
of fugitive slaves to this list.