tificate agreeably to the act of Congress, and the slave sued out of the Supreme Court a homine replegiando against the keeper of the prison where he remained, the court quashed the writ." Wright alias Hall v. Deacon, 5 Serg. & Rawle, 62. See also In the Matter of Martin, 2 Paine C. C. R.,

348.

The validity of the act of Congress, 1793, has been affirmed in the several state courts, where it has been brought in question, and state laws conflicting therewith declared unconstitutional. Wright v. Deacon, 5 Serg. & Rawl. 62; Glen. v. Hodges, 9 Johns. R., 67: Jack v. Martin, 12 Wend. R., 311; S. C., 12 Wend. R., 507; and Com. v. Griffin, 2 Pick. R., 11. In the first case, decided in 1819, Ch. Justice Tilghman in the course of his opinion, said:

"This is a matter of considerable importance, and the court has therefore held it some days under advisement. Whatever may be our private opinions on the subject of slavery, it is well known that our southern brethren would not have consented to become parties to a constitution under which the United States have enjoyed so much prosperity, unless their property in slaves had been secured. This Constitution has been adopted by the free consent of the citizens of Pennsylvania; and it is the duty of every man, whatever may be his office or station, to give it a fair and candid construction."

The case of Prigg v. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 16 Peters, 608, came before the Supreme Court of the United States, on a writ of error to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, brought under the twenty-fifth section of the Judiciary Act of 1789, ch. 20, for the purpose of revising the judgment of that court, in a case involving the construction of the Constitution and laws of the United States.

The plaintiff in error was indicted in the court of Oyer and Terminer for York county, for having with force and violence taken and carried away from that county to the State of Maryland, a certain negro woman, named Margaret Morgan, with a design and intention of selling and disposing of, and keeping her as a slave or servant for life, contrary to a statute of Pennsylvania, passed on the 26th of March, 1826.

That statute, in the first section, in substance provides that if any person or persons shall, from and after the passing of this act, by force and violence take and carry away, or cause to be taken and carried away, and shall, by fraud · or false pretence, seduce, or cause to be seduced, or shall attempt to take, carry away or seduce any negro or mulatto from any part of that commonwealth, with a design and intention of selling and disposing of, or causing to be sold, or of keeping and detaining, or of causing to be kept and detained, such negro or mulatto, as a slave or servant for life, or for any term whatever; every such person or persons, his or their aids or abettors shall, on conviction thereof, be deemed guilty of a felony, &c.

The plaintiff in error pleaded not guilty to the indictment, and the jury, on the trial, found a special verdict, which in substance states that the negro woman, Margaret Morgan, was a slave for life, and held to labor and service under and according to the laws of Maryland, to a certain Margaret Ashmore, a citizen of Maryland; that the slave escaped and fled from Maryland to Pennsylvania, in 1832; that the plaintiff in error, being legally constituted the agent and attorney of the said Margaret Ashmore, in 1837, caused the said negro woman to be taken and apprehended, as a fugitive from labor, by a state constable, under a warrant from a Pennsylvania magistrate; that the said negro woman was thereupon brought before the said magistrate, who refused to take further cognizance of the case; and thereupon the plaintiff in error did remove, take and carry

away the said negro woman and her children, out of Pennsylvania into Maryland, and did deliver the said negro woman and children into the custody and possession of the said Margaret Ashmore. The special verdict further finds that one of the children was born in Pennsylvania, more than a year after the said negro woman had fled and escaped from Maryland.

Upon this special verdict the court of Oyer and Terminer of York county adjudged that the plaintiff in error was guilty of the offence charged in the indictment. A writ of error was brought from that judgment to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, where the judgment was pro forma affirmed. From this latter judgment the writ of error was brought to the United States Supreme Court. The court held the act of Pennsylvania under which the indictment was framed to be unconstitutional and void, inasmuch as it undertook to punish as a public offence against the state, the very act of seizing and removing a slave by his master, which the Constitution of the United States was designed to justify and uphold.

In the course of their remarks, the court say:

"It is historically well known that the clause in the Constitution of the United States relating to persons owing service and labor in one state escaping into other states, 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. Its true design was to guard against the doctrines and prin

ciples prevailing in the non-slaveholding states, by preventing them from intermeddling with, or obstructing or abolishing the rights of the owners of slaves.

"The owner of a fugitive slave has the same right to seize and to take him in a state to which he has escaped or fled, that he had in the state from which he escaped; and it is well known that this right to seize or re-capture is universally acknowledged in all the slaveholding states.

"The court have not the slightest hesitation in holding that under and in virtue of the Constitution the owner of the slave is clothed with authority in every state of the Union, to seize and recapture his slave, wherever he can do it without any breach of the peace or illegal violence. In this sense, and to this extent this clause in the Constitution may properly be said to execute itself.

"A claim' to a fugitive slave is a controversy in a case 'arising under the Constitution of the United States,' under the express delegation of judicial power given by that instrument. Congress, then, may call that power into activity for the very purpose of giving effect to the right; and, if so, it may prescribe the mode and extent to which it may be applied; and how and under what circumstances the proceedings shall afford a complete protection and guaranty of the right.

"The provisions of the sections of the act of Congress of February, 1793, on the subject of fugitive slaves, as well as relative to fugitives from justice, cover both the subjects; not because they exhaust the remedies, which may be applied by Congress to enforce the right, if the provisions shall be found, in practice, not to attain the objects of the Constitution, but because they point out all the modes of attaining those objects which Congress have as yet deemed expedient and proper. If this be so it would seem, upon just principles of construction, that the legislation of Congress, if constitutional, must supersede all state legislation upon the same subject, and by necessary implication pro

hibit it. The provisions of the act of February 12, 1793, relative to fugitive slaves is clearly constitutional in all its provisions; and, indeed, with the exception of that part which confers authority on state magistrates, is free from reasonable doubt or difficulty. As to the authority so conferred on state magistrates, while a difference of opinion exists, and may exist on this point, in different states whether state magistrates are bound to act under it, none is entertained by the court that state magistrates may, if they choose, exercise the authority unless prohibited by state legislation."

The master may arrest his absconding slave on Sunday; in the night time; in the house of another, if no breach of the peace is committed. Baldwin C. C. Rep., 577.

And this right is the same as that by which special bail may arrest the principal in another state. Id. No person has a right to oppose the master in reclaiming his slave, or to demand proof of property. A judge or magistrate cannot order his arrest or detention without oath, warrant or probable cause. Ib.

By the act of Sept. 18, 1850, entitled "An act to amend and supplementary to 'An act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters,' approved Febuary twelfth, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three," it is provided:

"Sec. 1. That the commissioners appointed, in virtue of any act of congress by the Circuit Court of the United States, and who in consequence of such appointment are authorized to exercise the powers that any justice of the peace or other inagistrate of any of the United States, may