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out of the Northwest Territory: "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," or as it is expressed in the Missouri Compromise Act: "Slavery and involuntary servitude," otherwise than for crimes, "shall be and is hereby forever prohibited." It is true that each of these territorial acts contains a proviso for the return of fugitive slaves; but the clause of the Constitution of the United States upon that subject is universally admitted not to apply to any slaves but those who escape from the State where they are held into another; and it is only material to be referred to in this connection, as showing that its framers not only understood that slavery was a mere municipal regulation of the State in which the slave was held "under the laws thereof," but that the slave, on escaping into another, would, but for this clause, be "discharged" from such service.
But it is then argued that the view above stated secures the personal rights of the slave, at the expense of the right of property of the master, which being acquired by the laws of his domicil, must, by the comity of nations, be deemed his property everywhere. Without repeating the clauses of the Constitution of the United States, which uniformly speak of slaves as persons, and not as property, (because, as Mr. Madison said, its framers "thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution that there could be property in men,") one answer to this argument is well stated by Chief Justice Shaw: "The argument can apply only to those commodities which are everywhere, and by all nations, treated and deemed subjects of property. But it is not speaking with strict accuracy, to say that a property can be acquired in human beings, by local laws. Each State may, for its own convenience, declare that slaves shall be deemed property, and that the relations and laws of personal chattels shall be deemed to apply to them; as for instance, that they may be bought and sold, delivered, attached, levied upon, &c. But it would be a perversion of terms, to say that such local laws do in fact make them personal property generally; they can only determine that the same rules of law shall apply to them as are applicable to property, and this effect will follow only so far as such laws proprio vigore can operate." Commonwealth v. Aves, 18 Pick. 216.
An equally conclusive answer to the argument founded on the supposed rights of the master is, that the master,
