The northern star and freemen's advocate., 1842-03-10

ions, varying somewhat the grounds of the deci-
sion, but concurring, we understand, in all the
conclusions above recited.
This tremendous decision brings the great
question of freedom or slavery home to ali our
doors. There is not man in the free states who
is not affected by it-whose personal liberty is
not invaded and endangered by it. The constitu-
ton knows no distinction of white, black and IN
termediate colored persons; it says nothing ex-
pressly of slaves; speaks only of persons held
to labor or service in one state escaping into
another Now if negro may be apprehended in
this city and carried by force to Virginia. to some
one who claims him as an escaped Slave or sel-
want, then any of us-then Gov. Seward, Justice
Thompson or Justice Story, may be so taken
Where is the Safeguard against abuse9 Where
the protection to freemen? The State law of
1910, extending the right of trial by Jury to per
sons claimed as fugitives from labor or service
afford such protection BY that law slave
holder was required to prove his property in
man or woman claimed by him, as much as in
a horse or monkey. Even before the passage of
that law, STAKEHOLDER was always required to
verify has legal right before a Justice of the
peace, who approved it or set the arrested per
son at liberty. But this proviso, if we fully ap-
prehend the decision, is now declared nullity
as we'll as the trial by jury, and the Shareholder
is authorized to take his slave any where, and
without any legal process or security whatever.
We need not add that this authority to take his
slave is practically authority to take whomever
he may think or claim to be snch
This decision is the paramount law ofthe land
1t must be respected and obeyed as such while
slavery and the Union exist, unless modified by
subsequent acts of Congress. Weremark a prop
sition in certain papers for a countervailing
amendment of the federal constitution. But this
is manfestly iEpracticable. One-half the states
are slaveholding, and will of course agree TO
nothing Of the sort, while two-thirds required
to effect an amendment. 1t strikes us as the best
that can be done that Congress should at once
pass some law defining and regulating this
sweeping right of reclamation, and providing
adequate penalties for every manifest perversion
of the right to purposes of kidnapping or malevo-
lence. TO such action, intended merely to secure
free citizens from the grasp of the kdnapper, the
south ought to make no objection
1t may be we'll hereto add that the facts invov-
ed in the precise case passed on by the supreme
court are briefly these w.
Edward Prgg, the legal agent of STAKEHOLDER
in Maryland, went into Pennsylvania and there
apprehended negro woman who had been for
many years a resident, but was, it is understood,
originally and actually the fugitive slave he was
instructed to reclaim. He took her away by sim
pie force (having party to aid him. to her own
er in Maryland Coming again into Pennsylya-
MIA, he was arrested and convicted under law OF
that state which secures TO person claimed as
slave the right of tIial by jury and denounces the
carrying off claimed fugitive without such trial,
as penitentiary offence. The conviction was
affirmed by the supreme court ct Pennsylvania,
but an appeal being taken by Maryland to the su-
preme court of the Uuited States, the law Of
Pennsylvania under which Prgg was convicted
is declared repugnant to the federal constitutions
the: efore null and void, and Prigg entitled to his