,
as we have seen, a clause requiring escaped slaves to be surrendered
from one State to their masters in another.

The Governor of the State of Virginia refused the rendition of
three kidnappers of a free negro, on the requisition of the Governor
of Pennsylvania, from which State he had been kidnapped, on the
sole ground that no law required the surrender of fugitive slaves
from Virginia. The controversy thus arising was called to the
attention of President Washington and by him to Congress, and it
ended by the passage of the first fugitive-slave act. It was for
a time tolerably satisfactory to the different sections of the
country, though in itself the most flagrant attempt to violate
state-rights, judged from the more modern secession, state-rights
standpoint, ever attempted by Federal authority.

It required _state magistrates_, who owed their offices solely to
state law, to sit in judgment in fugitive-slave cases, and to aid
in returning to slavery negroes claimed as slaves by masters from
foreign States. The act provided for the return of fugitive
apprentices as well as fugitive slaves.

In time the Northern States became free, and the public conscience
in them became so changed that the magistrates were deterred or
unwilling to act in execution of the law. Massachusetts and
Pennsylvania each passed a law making it penal for any of their
officers to perform any duties or to take cognizance of any case
under the fugitive-slave law. Other States, through their judiciary,
pronounced it unconstitutional, even some of the Federal judges
doubted its consonance with the Constitution, but, such as it was,
it lasted until 1850. It did not provide for a jury trial. The
scenes enacted in its execution shocked the moral sense of mankind,
and even the slaveholder often shrank from attempting its execution.

But it was not until about the time of the excitement of the fugitive-
slave law of 1850 that the highest excitement prevailed in the
North over its enforcement, and of this we shall speak hereafter.

IX
SLAVE TRADE: ABOLISHED BY LAW

In the English Parliament, in 1776, the year of the Declaration of
Independence, the first motion was made towards the abolition of
the slave trade, long theretofore fostered by English kings and
queens, but not until 1807 did the British moral sense rise high
enough to pass, at Lord Granville's instance, the famous act for
"the Abolition of the Slave Trade." As early as 17