" These two
facts--that he was held to service, and that his service was due to
his claimant--are directly placed in issue, and must be proved. Two
necessary incidents of the delivery may also be observed. First, it
is made in the State where the fugitive is found; and, secondly,
it restores to the claimant complete control over the person of the
fugitive. From these circumstances it is evident that the proceedings
cannot be regarded, in any just sense, as preliminary, or ancillary
to some future formal trial, but as complete in themselves, final and
conclusive.
These proceedings determine on the one side the question of property,
and on the other the sacred question of personal liberty in its most
transcendent form,--Liberty not merely for a day or a year, but for
life, and the Liberty of generations that shall come after, so long as
Slavery endures. To these questions the Constitution, by two specific
provisions, attaches Trial by Jury. One is the familiar clause, already
adduced: "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property
without due process of law,"--that is, without due proceeding at law,
with Trial by Jury.
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