red up. But in the case of the Fugitive Slave, it
carefully alters the phraseology. It does not say that any person
_charged_ with being a Fugitive Slave shall be surrendered, but any
person who _is_ a Fugitive Slave. In the one case, the _charge_ is the
only material fact, and is proved by record. In the other case, which is
a question of property, the fact of property is the foundation of the
proceeding. So, in this act of 1850, the 6th Section does not provide
that any person who _claims_ a Fugitive Slave, shall have the right to
arrest him, but any person who _is the owner_ of a Fugitive Slave, may
arrest him. So in the 7th Section, the penalty is not inflicted for
rescuing a person who is _claimed_ as a Fugitive Slave, but for rescuing
a person who _is_ a Fugitive Slave. These provisions are in analogy with
the law of property, and of the arrest of persons and property, in all
other cases. As bad as this statute is, it is not quite so bad as its
friends in this case would make it.

The next consideration is, that it is not necessary that the claim
should be made by virtue of legal process. The owner or his agent may
arrest the fugitive _with or without process._ The offence is equally
committed, and the penalty is the same, whether the rescue is made from
the owner without process, or from the officer having process. This
fact, with the fact that there is a general statute relating to the
offence of obstructing judicial processes, shows that this statute
assumes the facts of property and escape to be true, and applies only to
cases in which they shall prove to be true.

If this is not so, what is the result? If a man claims another, without
process, by putting his hand on his shoulder, though the man may be as
free as you or I, if he resists, or his friends aid him in resisting,
the offence is committed. A man claimed as a Fugitive Slave, has been
rescued or aided in his escape. You cannot refuse to deliver up a
colored boy or girl born in your house, of free parents, to any man who
knocks at your door and claims the child, with or without a warrant,
without incurring the penalties of this act. This monstrous construction
can never be admitted. I beseech the Commissioner to reconsider his
intimated opinion on this point, and to hold the Government to
preliminary proof, in the outset, that the person rescued was a slave by
the law of Virginia, was the slave of the man who claimed him, and was a
fugitive from that s