n unanimously adopted because it was a
clause for the surrender of "fugitives from service or labor" only, and
not for the surrender of fugitive slaves?

Such appears to be the insinuation of Mr. Sumner. Be this as it may, it
is certain that he has afterward said that it may be questioned whether
"the language employed" in this clause "can be judicially regarded as
justly applicable to fugitive slaves, _which is often and earnestly
denied_.". . . . "_Still further_," he says, in italics, "_to the courts
of each State must belong the determination of the question, to which
class of persons, according to just rules of interpretation, the phrase
'persons held to service or labor' is strictly applicable._"

Mr. Sumner doubts, then, whether this provision, after all, refers to
"fugitive slaves." Now, although he has said much in regard to "the
effrontery of the Southern members of the convention" that formed the
Constitution, we may safely defy him, or any other man, to point to any
thing in their conduct which approximates to such audacity. What! the
clause in question not designed to embrace fugitive slaves? Mr. Butler,
even before he introduced the clause, declared, as we have seen, that
such would be its design. It was so understood by every member of the
convention; for there was not a man there who possessed the capacity to
misunderstand so plain a matter; and it has been so understood by every
man, of all parties and all factions, from that day down to the present.
Not one of the hired advocates who have been employed, in different
States, to argue against the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave
Law, has ever had the unblushing effrontery to contend that the clause
in question is not applicable to fugitive slaves. Nay, more, until Mr.
Sumner appeared, the frantic zeal of no abolitionist had ever so
completely besotted his intellect as to permit him to take such ground.
By Dr. Channing, by Mr. Seward, and by Mr. Chase, such application of
the words in question is unhesitatingly admitted; and hence we dismiss
Mr. Sumner's discovery with the contempt it deserves.

But to return. "The provision," says Mr. Sumner, "which showed itself
thus tardily, and was so slightly noticed in the National Convention,
was neglected in most of the contemporaneous discussions before the
people." No wonder; for it was merely declaratory of the "customary or
common law" of that day. "In the Conventions of South Carolina, North
Carolina