James Moore Wayne

“ That the legislation by congress upon the provision, as the supreme law of the land, excludes all state legislation upon the same subject; and that no state can pass any law or regulation, or interpose such as may have been a law or regulation when the constitution of the United States was ratified, to superadd to, control, qualify or impede a remedy, enacted by congress, for the delivery of fugitive slaves to the parties to whom their service or labor is due. ”

“ I am satisfied with what was done; and revere the men, and their motives for insisting, politically, upon what was done. When the three points relating to slaves had been accomplished, every impediment in they way of forming a constitution was removed. The agreement concerning them was called, in the convention, a compromise; the provision in respect to fugitives from service or labor, was called a guarantee of a right of property in fugitive slaves, wherever they might be found in the Union. ”

“ But it does provide, that delivery of a fugitive shall be made on the claim of the owner that the fugitive slave owing service and labor in the state from which he fled, and escaping therefrom, shall be decisive of the owner's right to a delivery. It does not, however, provide the mode of proving that service and labor is due, in a contested case, nor for any such evidence of the right, when it has been established, as will insure to an owner the unmolested transportation of the fugitive, through other states, to the state from which he fled. ”

“ For that is to assume, that provision only prevented discharges from being made by the states, by enactment or law, declaring that fugitive slaves might be discharged. The provision will not admit of such an interpretation. Nor is it any answer to say, that state regulations to ascertain whether a fugitive owes service or labor, are distinguishable from such as, directly or by construction, would lead to his discharge; for if a discharge be made under one or the other-whether the discharge be right or wrong, at is a discharge under the regulation of a state. ”

“ The answer to this is, that legislation may be confined to that end, and be made effectual, without making such a remedy applicable to fugitive slaves. There is no propriety in making a remedy to protect those who are free, the probable means of freeing those who are not so. ”

“ Apart from the position that the states may legislate in all cases, where they are not expressly prohibited, or by necessary implication; the claim for the states to legislate is mainly advocated upon the ground, that they are bound to protect free blacks and persons of color residing in them from being carried into slavery by any summary process. ”

“ It may regulate the quantity and quality of the proof to establish the right of an owner to a fugitive, and give compensatory and punitory damages against a claimant, if his right be not established according to such proof. ”