The Federal Constitution, Formerly and Now [pp. 149-159]

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.
legislature of New-York, as well as some members of the
general assembly of Massachusetts. The bills introduced in
these bodies to which we refer, we have not seen, and cannot
state the details of either. We believe from what we have
heard that each bill provided rooms and support for a term of
years in their penitentiaries, for masters who vexed their fugitive slaves by pursuit. In the first-mentioned State, the bill,
it is said, was materially modified and afterward passed, with
provisions of which we are ignorant. The bill to which we
have referred in the legislature of Massachusetts was defeated
by a majority of one or two votes. Property in debts due to
creditors in these three States, or any other State, is not more
clearly recognized and protected by the Constitution than
property in slaves. If it be just and constitutional for a free
State to make it a penitentiary offence for a slaveholder to
pursue his fugitive slave with the purpose of recovering his
property in him, it would be equally just and lawful for Alabama or any other slaveholding State to provide a similar punishment for any creditor from a free State who may come into
the jurisdiction of a slaveholding State, for the purpose of recovering his property in the debts due to him there. How
would such a retaliatory law be relished by those who have
furnished or approve of the precedent for it?
There could be no stronger proof of bitter hostility to the
Supreme Court of the United States, of contempt for its authority and for the supreme law of the whole land, than has
been given by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. A person
who had been convicted before the District Court of the United States for Wisconsin, of a violation of the fugitive slave
law, and sentenced to the lawful penalty for his offence, was
brought before that court, by the exercise of power it had
usurped, and discharged from the constitutional custody of
the authorities of the United States. As no appeal lies from
a judgment of the District Court of the United States for the
State of Wisconsin, to the Supreme Court of that State, the
jurisdiction exercised by the latter, and by which it lawlessly
interfered with the judgment of the former, was in effect
seized and maintained by violence. Obvious as was the violation of the Constitution by which the Court of Wisconsin
took the jurisdiction it asserted and exercised in the case, it
did so upon the pretext of supporting and preserving that instrument in its integrity, and declared the fugitive slave law a
violation of the Constitution of the United States. The questions arising out of the unprecedented action of the State
court of Wisconsin, were considered and decided by the Su
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