very would
not be permanent under it. In this belief it was framed. Slavery
was not affirmatively recognized in it, though there was much
discussion as to it in the Constitutional Convention. There was
no attempt to abolish it; such an attempt would have failed in the
Convention, and the Constitution, so necessary to the new nation,
had it even provided for gradual emancipation, would not have been
ratified by the States.

It can hardly be said that the Constitution was framed on the line
of compromise as to the preservation of human slavery, though it
was necessary, in some occult ways, to recognize its existence.
This was in the nature, however, of a concession to it; the word
_slave_ or _slavery_ was not used in it.

The Supreme Court of the United States, however, early interpreted
the third clause of Section IV., Article 2, as providing for the
return from one State to another of fugitive slaves. This
interpretation has been, on high authority, and with much reason,
in the light of history, stoutly denied. The clause reads:

"No person _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 is due."

The "service or labor" here referred to, it is claimed, was that
owing by persons who were under indentures of some kind, growing
out of contracts for transportation into the colonies of persons
from the Old World, and possibly growing out of other contract
obligations wherein they had agreed, for a long or short term, to
perform "service or labor." Many such obligations then existed.

Slaves were not then nor since regarded by their owners as "_persons_"
merely "held to service or labor," but they were held as personal
chattels, owing no duty to their masters distinguishable from that
owing by an ox, a horse, or an ass.

But the supreme judiciary and the executive and legislative
departments of the government came soon to treat this as a fugitive-
slave clause. It is only now interesting to examine its peculiar
phraseology and the history and surrounding circumstances under
which it became a part of the Constitution, to demonstrate the
great care and desire of the eminent and liberty-loving framers of
the Constitution to avoid the direct recognition of African slavery.

The only other clause in wh