In that respect, the South, in my judgment, is right, and the
North is wrong. Every member of every Northern legislature is bound
by oath, like every other officer in the country, to support the
Constitution of the United States; and the article of the Constitution
which says to these States that they shall deliver up fugitives from
service, is as binding in honor and conscience as any other article.
No man fulfils his duty in any legislature who sets himself to find
excuses, evasions, escapes from this constitutional obligation. I
have always thought that the Constitution addressed itself to the
legislatures of the States or to the States themselves. It says that
those persons escaping to other States "shall be delivered up," and I
confess I have always been of the opinion that it was an injunction
upon the States themselves. When it is said that a person escaping into
another State, and coming therefore within the jurisdiction of that
State, shall be delivered up, it seems to me the import of the clause
is, that the State itself, in obedience to the Constitution, shall cause
him to be delivered up.
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