ishonorable to the American character, than to say nothing
about it in the Constitution." (_Madison Papers_, p. 1427.) Mr. Mason
from Virginia denounced the traffic as "infernal." (_Madison Papers_, p.
1390.) The result of all these threats on each side was, as usual, a
compromise, by which Congress was prohibited from suppressing the
foreign and internal commerce in slaves for twenty years, and was left
at liberty to do as it might see fit, after that period. After twenty
years the foreign trade was suppressed, and North and South Carolina and
Georgia remained in the Union! Virginia, as well as the other Slave
States, is greatly interested in the home slave-trade, and that has
_not_ been suppressed, although Congress has full power over it.

It does not appear from Mr. Madison's report what reply was made in the
Convention to the Virginia objections, but in his speech in the
Convention of his own State, he tells us,--"The gentlemen from South
Carolina and Georgia argued in this manner: We have now liberty to
import this species of property, and much of the property now possessed
had been purchased or otherwise acquired in contemplation of improving
it by the assistance of imported slaves. What would be the consequence
of hindering us in this point? The _slaves_ of Virginia would rise in
value, and we should be obliged to go to your markets." (_Elliott's
Debates_, III. 454.) Certainly, Sir, these South Carolina and Georgia
delegates were "very wise men," and their predictions are now history,
and the planters of Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana
buy slaves of the Virginia breeders. But what shall I say of the wise
men from the East? This horrible compromise, this guarantee of the
African slave-trade for twenty years, was carried by the votes of the
Massachusetts and Connecticut delegates, and would have been defeated,
had they had the courage and virtue to have voted against it.

I have indulged in this long digression, to show that the clause in the
Constitution respecting fugitive slaves was not, as you represent it,
the great compromise of the Constitution, the key-stone of the Union,
and that our slaveholding fathers were not, as you suppose, greatly
perplexed, nor their consciences deeply wounded, by the existence of
slavery in all the States of the confederacy with one exception. Having
disposed of your history, I return to your logic.

Whether the constitutional injunction to surrender fugitive