shade nearer white than
Mulatto [the seven-eighths law].[39] Their testimony was admissible,
while that of Negroes and Mulattoes was not admitted against them. In
Jordan _vs._ Smith [1846], 14, Ohio, p. 199: "A black person sued by a
white, may make affidavit to a plea so as to put the plaintiff to
proof."

Attention has been called to the fact that the fugitive-slave law was
respected in Ohio. In 1818-19, a law was passed to prevent the
unlawful kidnapping of free Negroes, which, in its preamble, recites
the provisions of the law of Congress, passed February 12, 1793,
respecting fugitives from service and labor.[40] And in 1839 the
Legislature passed another act relating to "fugitives from labor,"
etc., paving the way by the following recital:

"WHEREAS, The second section of the fourth article of the
Constitution of the United States declares that 'no person'
[etc., reciting it]; and whereas the laws now in force within the
State of Ohio are wholly inadequate to the protection pledged by
this provision of the Constitution to the Southern States of this
Union; and whereas it is the duty of those who reap the largest
measure of benefits conferred by the Constitution to recognize to
their full extent the obligations which that instrument imposes;
and whereas it is the deliberate conviction of this General
Assembly that the Constitution can only be sustained as it was
framed by a spirit of just compromise; therefore."

Sec. 1. Authorizes judges of courts of record, "or any justice of
the peace, or the mayor of any city or town corporate," on
application, etc., of claimant, to bring the fugitive before a
judge within the county where the warrant was issued, or before
some State judge with certain cautions as to proving the official
character of the officer issuing the warrant; gives the form of
warrant, directing the fugitive to be brought before, etc., "to
be be dealt with as the law directs."[41]

J. Peck, Esq. [9, Ohio, p. 212], refers to the laws of 1818-19, and
1830-31, as a recognition by the State of Ohio of the power of
Congress to pass the act of 1793, though that the act was not
specially mentioned.

The first constitution of Ohio [1802] restricted the right of suffrage
to "all white male inhabitants." "In all elections, all white male
inhabitants above the age of twenty-one years, having resided in the
State one