oyed in the
government of the Union. If it were required to designate the owners
of this species of property among them, it would be little more than a
catalogue of slaveholders.'"

It is confessed by Mr. Adams, alluding to the national convention that
framed the Constitution, that "the delegation from the free States, in
their extreme anxiety to conciliate the ascendency of the Southern
slaveholder, did listen to _a compromise between right and
wrong--between freedom and slavery_; of the ultimate fruits of which
they had no conception, but which already even now is urging the Union
to its inevitable ruin and dissolution, by a civil, servile, foreign,
and Indian war, all combined in one; a war, the essential issue of
which will be between freedom and slavery, and in which the unhallowed
standard of slavery will be the desecrated banner of the North
American Union--that banner, first unfurled to the breeze, inscribed
with the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence."

Hence to swear to support the Constitution of the United States, _as
it is_, is to make "a compromise between right and wrong," and to wage
war against human liberty. It is to recognize and honor as republican
legislators, _incorrigible men-stealers_, MERCILESS TYRANTS, BLOOD
THIRSTY ASSASSINS, who legislate with deadly weapons about their
persons, such as pistols, daggers, and bowie-knives, with which they
threaten to murder any Northern senator or representative who shall
dare to stain their _honor_, or interfere with their _rights_! They
constitute a banditti more fierce and cruel than any whose atrocities
are recorded on the pages of history or romance. To mix with them on
terms of social or religious fellowship, is to indicate a low state of
virtue; but to think of administering a free government by their
co-operation, is nothing short of insanity.

Article IV., Section 2, declares,--"no person held to service or labor
on 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."

Here is a third clause, which, like the other two, makes no mention of
slavery or slaves, in express terms; and yet, like them, was
intelligently framed and mutually understood by the parties to the
ratification, and intended both to protect the slave system and to
rest