--to give place in it to the
_thing_. They were careful to wrap up the idea, and the substance of
Slavery, in the clause for the surrender of the fugitive, though they
sacrificed justice in doing so.

There is abundant evidence that this clause touching "persons held to
service or labor," not only operates practically, under the judicial
construction, for the protection of the slave interest; but that it
was _intended_ so to operate by the framers of the Constitution. The
highest judicial authorities--Chief Justice Shaw, of the Supreme Court
of Massachusetts, in the Latimer case, and Mr. Justice Story, in the
Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of _Prigg vs. The
State of Pennsylvania_,--tell us, I know not on what evidence, that
without this "compromise," this security for Southern slaveholders,
"the Union could not have been formed." And there is still higher
evidence, not only that the framers of the Constitution meant by this
clause to protect slavery, but that they did this, knowing that
slavery was wrong. Mr. Madison[12] informs us that the clause in
question, as it came out of the hands of Dr. Johnson, the chairman of
the "committee on style," read thus: "No person legally held to
service, or labor, in one State, escaping into another, shall," &c.,
and the word "legally" was struck out, and the words "under the laws
thereof" inserted after the word "State," in compliance with the wish
of some, who thought the term _legal_ equivocal, and favoring the idea
that slavery was legal "_in a moral view_." A conclusive proof that,
although future generations might apply that clause to other kinds of
"service or labor," when slavery should have died out, or been killed
off by the young spirit of liberty, which was _then_ awake and at work
in the land; still, slavery was what they were wrapping up in
"equivocal" words: and wrapping it up for its protection and safe
keeping: a conclusive proof that the framers of the Constitution were
more careful to protect themselves in the judgement of coming
generations, from the charge of ignorance, than of sin; a conclusive
proof that they knew that slavery was not "legal in a moral view,"
that it was a violation of the moral law of God; and yet knowing and
confessing its immorality, they dared to make this stipulation for its
support and defence.

[Footnote 12: Madison Papers, p. 1589.]

This language may sound harsh to the ears of those who think it a part
of their d