forbear--again to do them justice--to give place in it to
the _thing_. They were careful to wrap up the idea, and the substance
of Slavery, in the clause for the surrender of the fugitive, though
they sacrificed justice in doing so.

There is abundant evidence that this clause touching "persons held
to service or labor," not only operates practically, under the
judicial construction, for the protection of the slave interest; but
that it was intended so to operate by the framers of the
Constitution. The highest judicial authorities--Chief Justice Shaw,
of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in the Latimer case, and
Mr. Justice Story, in the Supreme Court of the United States, in the
case of _Prigg_ vs. _The State of Pennsylvania_,--tell us, I know
not on what evidence, that without this "compromise," this security
for Southern slaveholders, "the Union could not have been formed."
And there is still higher evidence, not only that the framers of the
Constitution meant by this clause to protect slavery, but that they
did this, knowing that slavery was wrong. Mr. Madison[95] informs us
that the clause in question, as it came out of the hands of Dr.
Johnson, the chairman of the "committee on style," read thus: "No
person legally held to service, or labor, in one State, escaping into
another, shall," &c., and that the word "legally" was struck out, and
the words "under the laws thereof" inserted after the word "State," in
compliance with the wish of some, who thought the term _legal_
equivocal, and favoring the idea that slavery was legal "_in a moral
view_." A conclusive proof that, although future generations might
apply that clause to other kinds of "service or labor," when slavery
should have died out, or been killed off by the young spirit of
liberty, which was _then_ awake and at work in the land; still,
slavery was what they were wrapping up in "equivocal" words; and
wrapping it up for its protection and safe keeping: a conclusive proof
that the framers of the Constitution were more careful to protect
themselves in the judgment of coming generations, from the charge
of ignorance, than of sin; a conclusive proof that they knew that
slavery was _not_ "legal in a moral view," that it was a violation
of the moral law of God; and yet knowing and confessing its
immorality, they dared to make this stipulation for its support and
defence.

[Footnote 95: Madison Papers, p. 1589]

This language may sound harsh to the ears of