29

LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

403

[blessings] of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, we were told that the words
said so, but that that was obviously not its intention; that it was intended to
apply only to white people, and that the intention must govern.

"When we came to the clause of the Constitution which declares that the
immigration or importation of such persons as any of the States may see fit
to admit shall not be prohibited, and the friends of liberty declared that this
provision of the Constitution did not describe the slave-trade, they were told
that while its language applied not to the slaves, but to persons, still the
object and intention of that clause of the Constitution were plainly to protect
the slave-trade and that that intention was the law and must prevail. When
we came to that clause of the Constitution which declares that 'No person
held to labor or service in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into
another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged
from such labor or service, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to
whom such labor or service may be due, we insisted that it neither described
nor applied to slaves; that it applied only to persons owing service and labor;
that slaves did not and could not owe service and labor; that this clause of
the Constitution said nothing of slaves or of the masters of slaves: that it was
silent as to Slave States or Free States: that it was simply a provision to
enforce a contract and not to force any man into slavery, for the slave could
not owe service or make a contract.

"We affirmed that it gave no warrant for what was called 'The Fugitive
Slave Bill,' and we contended that the bill was therefore unconstitutional; but
our arguments were laughed to scorn by that Court and by all the Courts of
the country. We were told that the intention of the Constitution was to enable
masters to recapture slaves, and that the law of Ninety-three and the Fugitive
Slave Law of 1850 were constitutional. binding not only on the State but
upon each citizen of a State.

"Fellow-citizens! While slavery was the base line of American society;
while it ruled the church and state: while it was the interpreter of our law and
the exponent of our religion, it admitted no quibbling, no narrow rules of legal
or scriptural interpretations of the Bible or of the Constitution. It sternly
demanded its pound of flesh, no matter how the scale turned or how much
blood was shed in the taking of it. It was enough for it to be able to show the
intention to get all it asked in the courts or out of the courts. But now slavery
is abolished. Its reign was long, dark and bloody. Liberty is now the base line
of the Republic. Liberty has supplanted slavery but I fear it has not supplanted
the spirit or power of slavery. Where slavery was strong, liberty is now weak.

"Oh. for a Supreme Court of the United States which shall be as true to