The United States Constitution, Restoration of Fugitive Slaves. (Const., Art. 4, sec. 2.) (3)

In Hylton vs. United States, (3 Dallas’s Rep. 177,) Mr. Justice Paterson, delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court, says that the provision contained in this clause, that direct taxes shall be apportioned between the States according to their federal numbers, “was made in favor of the Southern States,” and to prevent Congress from taxing “slaves at discretion, or arbitrarily.” He also says, (p. 178,) “The rule of apportionment is radically wrong; it cannot be supported by any solid reasoning. Why should slaves, who are a species of property, be represented more than any other property?”

In the great case of Gibbons vs. Ogden, 9 Wheaton’s Reports, pp. 206 and 207, (1824,) Chief Justice Marshall, delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court, says that the act of Congress, (1803, c. 63,) “prohibiting the importation of slaves into any State which shall itself prohibit their importation,” was passed in virtue of power conferred by this clause in the Constitution.

The following extracts are taken from the opinion of the Supreme Court in the well-known case, Prigg vs. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, (16 Pet. Rep. 609, &c.) Judge Story delivered the opinion.

“Historically, it is well known that the object of this clause was to secure to the citizens of the slaveholding States the complete right and title of ownership in their slaves, as property, in every State in the Union into which they might escape from the State where they were held in servitude. The full recognition of this right and title was indispensable to the security of this species of property in all the slaveholding States; and, indeed, was so vital to the preservation of their domestic interests and institutions, that it cannot be doubted that it constituted a fundamental article, without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed,” (p. 613.) “We have not the slightest hesitation in holding, that, under and in virtue of the Constitution, the owner of a slave is clothed with entire authority, in every State in the Union, to seize and recapture his slave, whenever he can do it without any breach of the peace, or any illegal violence. In this sense, and to this extent, this clause of the Constitution may properly be said to execute itself, and to require no aid from legislation, state or national.”