." It is repeated without end that the
"Constitution acts on slaves as _persons_, and not as property."
Granted; and if Northern men will, according to the mandate of the
Constitution, only deliver up our fugitive servants, we care not whether
they restore them as persons or as property. If we may only reclaim them
as persons, and regain their service, we are perfectly satisfied. We
utterly despise all such verbal quibbling.

Mr. Madison was above it. He acted wisely, we repeat, in refusing to
shock the mind of any one, by insisting upon a mere word, and upon a
word, too, which might not have conveyed a correct idea of his own
views. But that Mr. Madison could, as he undersood the terms, regard
slaves as property, we have the most incontestable evidence. For in the
Convention of Virginia, called to ratify the Constitution of the United
States, he said, "Another clause secures us that _property_ which we now
possess. At present, if any slave elopes to any of those States where
slaves are free, he becomes emancipated by their laws, for the laws of
the States are uncharitable to one another in this respect." He then
quotes the provision from the Constitution relative to fugitives from
labor, and adds: "This clause was expressly inserted to enable _owners_
of slaves to reclaim them." So much for Mr. Sumner's main argument from
the language of the members of the Convention of 1787.

Arguing from the sentiments of that convention with respect to slavery,
he concludes that nothing could have been further from their intentions
than to confer upon Congress the power to pass a uniform Fugitive Slave
Law. He boldly asserts, that if a proposition to confer such a power
upon Congress had "been distinctly made it would have been distinctly
denied." "But no person in the convention," he says, "_not one of the
reckless partisans of slavery, was so audacious as to make the
proposition_." Now we shall show that the above statement of his is
diametrically opposed to the truth. We shall show that the members of
the convention in question were perfectly willing to confer such a power
upon Congress.

The reason why they were so is obvious to any one who has a real
knowledge of the times about whose history Mr. Sumner so confidently
declaims. This reason is well stated in the language of the Chancellor
of New York whom we have already quoted. "The provision," says he, "as
to persons escaping from servitude in one State into another, appears