most
exclusively of slaveholders, the idea was exceedingly relished; and
without a word of opposition, the suggestion was unanimously adopted.
From Mr. Madison's report we learn that, the day before, Messrs. Butler
and Pinckney had informally proposed that fugitive slaves and servants
should be delivered up "like criminals." "Mr. Wilson [of Penn.]. This
would oblige the Executive of the State to do it at the public expense.
Mr. Sherman [of Conn.] saw no more propriety in the public seizing and
surrendering a slave or servant than a horse." (_Madison Papers_, p.
1447.) The subject was here dropped. The next day the motion was made in
form, and, as Mr. Madison says, "agreed to, _nem. con._" From the
phraseology of the motion, and the objections of Messrs. Wilson and
Sherman, it was perfectly understood that the obligation of delivery was
imposed on the States, and that no power was intended to be conferred on
Congress to legislate on the subject. Messrs. Wilson and Sherman's
objections arose from no moral repugnance to slave-catching, but from
the inconvenience they apprehended the _State_ authorities would be
subjected to; and Mr. Wilson perhaps spoke from experience, as his own
State had at that very time a law for catching and returning fugitive
slaves from other States. The idea, therefore, that this agreement was a
_compromise_ between the North and South is wholly imaginary, and you,
Sir, must have mistaken some recent fulminations from the Southern
chivalry for the "deliberate declarations" which you suppose were made
in the Convention. Believe me, Sir, no members of the Convention ever
declared they would not enter into the Union, unless it was agreed to
surrender fugitive slaves, for the obvious reason, that the Northern
slaveholders required no threats from their Southern brethren to consent
to a compact convenient to both. It is very true, Sir, that there were
compromises, and that there were "deliberate declarations," but they had
no reference to the surrender of runaway slaves. I have pointed out your
historical mistake, not because it has the remotest bearing on your
justification, but because you seem to think that it has.

The first great compromise was between, not the North and the South, but
the small and the large States. The one claimed, and the other refused,
an equality of suffrage in the national legislature. It was at last
agreed, that the suffrage should be equal in one house, and according to
po