Robert Cooper Grier

“ The power to make municipal regulations for the restraint and punishment of crime, for the preservation of the health and morals of her citizens, and of the public peace, has never been surrendered by the States, or restrained by the Constitution of the United States. ”

“ Experience has shown, also, that the results of such conduct as that prohibited by the statute in question are not only to demoralize their citizens who live in daily and open disregard of the duties imposed upon them by the Constitution and laws, but to destroy the harmony and kind feelings which should exist between citizens of this Union, to create border feuds and bitter animosities, and to cause breaches of the peace, violent assaults, riots, and murder. ”

“ That any State law or regulation which interrupts, impedes, limits, embarrasses, delays, or postpones the right of the owner to the immediate possession of the slave, and the immediate command of his service, is void. ”

“ As this statute does not impede the master in the exercise of his rights, so neither does it interfere to aid or assist him. If a State, in the exercise of its legitimate powers in promotion of its policy of excluding an unacceptable population, should thus indirectly benefit the master of a fugitive, no one has a right to complain that it has, thus far at least, fulfilled a duty assumed or imposed by its compact as a member of the Union. ”

“ But admitting that the plaintiff in error may be liable to an action under the act of Congress, for the same acts of harboring and preventing the owner from retaking his slave, it doesnot follow that he would be twice punished for the same offence. An offence, in its legal signification, means the transgression of a law. A man may be compelled to make reparation in damages to the injured party, and be liable also to punishment for a breach of the public peace, in consequence of the same act ”

“ The offences for which the fourth section of the act of 12th February, 1793, subjects the delinquent to a fine of five hundred dollars, are different in many respects from those defined by the statute of Illinois. The act of Congress contemplates racapture and reclamation, and punishes those who interfere with the master in the exercise of this right-first, by obstructing or hindering the claimant in his endeavors to seize and arrest the fugitive ”