LAW OR
REGULATION THEREIN, BE DISCHARGED FROM SUCH SERVICE OR LABOR, BUT SHALL
BE DELIVERED UP ON CLAIM OF THE PARTY TO WHOM SUCH SERVICE OR LABOR MAY
BE DUE."

Is there any mistake about that? Is there any forty-shilling attorney
here to make a question of it? No. I will not disgrace my profession by
supposing such a thing. There is not, in or out of an attorney's office
in the county of Erie, or elsewhere, one who could raise a doubt, or a
particle of a doubt, about the meaning of this provision of the
Constitution. He may act as witnesses do, sometimes, on the stand. He
may wriggle, and twist, and say he cannot tell, or cannot remember. I
have seen many such efforts in my time, on the part of witnesses, to
falsify and deny the truth. But there is no man who can read these words
of the Constitution of the United States, and say they are not clear and
imperative. "No person," the Constitution says, "held to service or
labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another,
shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged
from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the
party to whom such service or labor may be due." Why, you may be told by
forty conventions in Massachusetts, in Ohio, in New York, or elsewhere,
that, if a colored man comes here, he comes as a freeman; that is a _non
sequitur_. It is not so. If he comes as a fugitive from labor, the
Constitution says he is not a freeman, and that he shall be delivered up
to those who are entitled to his service.

Gentlemen, that is the Constitution of the United States. Do we, or do
we not, mean to conform to it, and to execute that part of the
Constitution as well as the rest of it? I believe there are before me
here members of Congress. I suppose there may be here members of the
State legislature, or executive officers under the State government. I
suppose there may be judicial magistrates of New York, executive
officers, assessors, supervisors, justices of the peace, and constables
before me. Allow me to say, Gentlemen, that there is not, that there
cannot be, any one of these officers in this assemblage, or elsewhere,
who has not, according to the form of the usual obligation, bound
himself by a solemn oath to support the Constitution. They have taken
their oaths on the Holy Evangelists of Almighty God, or by uplifted
hand, as the case may be, or by a solemn affirmation, as is the practice
in some cases; but amo