320 Southern Historical Society Papers.
Of this clause Judge Story, in delivering the opinion of the Su- preme Court in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, said: "It cannot be doubted that it constituted a fundamental article, without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed." 16 Peters. It must, therefore, of course, have been a condition of the Union's continu- ance.
We will see how this provision of the Constitution was observed and treated by the abolition or free States. Between the years 1810 and 1850 the losses to the South in fugitive slaves amounted to $22,000,000, an annual loss for that period of $550,000. The ratio of loss increased as the slave population increased. To what it amounted at the date of secession I am unable to state just now. The curious, however, may readily ascertain. The census for 1810 gave a slave population of 1,191,400; that of 1820, 1,538,100; that of 1830, 2,009,030; that of 1840, 2,487,500; that of 1850, 3,204,300; that of 1860, 3,979,700. Estimating the average value at $300, the South lost by the emancipation $1,193,910,000, exclusive of at least $6,500,000 in fugitives between the years 1850 and 1861.
The claim of the party of coercion, that morality justified the in- fliction of that loss on the South, is met and fully answered by their head, President Lincoln, who said in the Hampton Roads' confer- ence, " that the people of the North were as responsible for slavery as the people of the South." History shows the North to be equally responsible at the least, and I undertake to say more so, and I feel sure that I am able to prove it should it ever become necessary.
About the first of May, 1850, the New York State Vigilance Anti- Slavery Committee, of which the famous Gerritt Smith was chair- man, held its anniversary meeting in public in the city of New York. I give a single passage from its official report :
"The committee have within the year, since the ist of May. 1849, assisted one hundred and fifty -one fugitives (for that you know is our business) in escaping from servitude." I cite this as one of many specimens of the respect the anti-slavery people had for constitu- tional guaranties and protections.
In speaking upon the clause of the Constitution just cited, Mr. Seward, of New York, said in the United States Senate on March ii, 1850: "The law of nations disavows such compacts, the law of Nature written on the hearts and consciences of freemen repudiates them. I know that there are laws of various sorts which regulate the conduct of men. There are constitutions and statutes, codes mercantile, and codes civil; but when we are legislating for States,
