whenever a slave has been demanded of the executive authority of the State to which he has fled, and is not delivered, and the owner permitted to carry him out of the State in peace, the State so failing to deliver shall pay to the owner double the value of such slave, and secure his right of action in the Supreme Court.
3. Provide for the protection of the owner in the peaceable possession of his slave while in transition or temporarily sojourning in any of the States of the Confederacy, and, in the event of the slave's escaping or being taken from the owner, require the State to return, or account for, him as in the case of a fugitive.
4. Especially prohibit Congress from abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, in any dock-yard, navy-yard, arsenal, or any district of any character whatever, within the limits of any slave State.
5. Provide that these amendments shall never be changed except by consent of all the slave States.
With these amendments to the Constitution, Governor Harris said that he could feel that the rights of the Southern States were reasonably secure, not only in theory, but in fact, and should indulge the hope of living in the Union in peace. "If the non-slaveholding States refuse to comply with a demand so just and reasonable; refuse to abandon at once and forever their unjust war upon us, our institutions, and our rights; refuse, as they have heretofore done to perform, in good faith, the obligations of the compact of the Union, much as we appreciate the power, prosperity, and glory of this government, deeply as we deplore the existence of the causes which have already driven one State out of the Union, much as we regret the imperative necessity which they have wantonly and wickedly forced upon us, every consideration of self-preservation and self-respect requires that we should assert and maintain our equality in the Union, or our independence out of it."
