Constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law

CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW – OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL. There seems to be a general impression among the Abolitionists of the North and among some citizens of the North who probably are not Abolitionists, that the present fugitive slave law denies to the fugitive the benefit of haebus corpus, and, upon this ground, it is denounced as unconstitutional. One of the resolutions of the late meeting in Faneuil Hall, in which a few citizens of considerable intellectual distinction participated, characterized the law “as inconsistent with the purpose of the Constitution of the United States, which was ordained to establish justice and secure the blessings of liberty, and is in direct violation of its provisions, because it takes away the benefits of the haebus corpus – the right of the people to be secure in their persons against unreasonable seizures – and deprives men of their liberty without due process of law.” Indeed, we do not remember to have read the proceedings of a single meeting in opposition to the law did not make its supposed denial of the right of haebus corpus the chief ground of objection to it.  It now appears that President Fillmore, when the fugitive slave bill was presented to him for his signature, entertained a doubt as to whether, if it should become a law, it would or would not deny the right of haebus corpus to the fugitive and thus violate the Constitution, and, for the decision of that point, he submitted the bill to Mr. Crittenden, the chief law officer of the Government. Mr. Crittenden gave a careful examination to the bill, and wrote out his opinion, and that opinion we publish to-day, copying it from the Washington Republic. The distinguished Attorney General made it perfectly clear that the writ of haebus corpus would not be suspended by the bill, and thereupon the President signed it, making it a law. Under the operation of this law, any fugitive slave or any person arrested as a fugitive slave has the full privilege of the writ about which Northern meetings declaim so loudly and violently, and therefore their denunciation is utterly groundless.   We earnestly hope and trust that this opinion of the Attorney General, by placing the matter in its true light, will have the effect to calm in a great measure the agitations in the North. There are in that part of the country fierce abolitionists, relentless enemies of the Union, whose incendiary passions nothing can allay, but we are confident that all the rational men and patriots of that section, when they find upon examination and reflection that the writ of haebus corpus is not suspended by the fugitive slave law, and that persons arrested as fugitive slaves can have, precisely like white fugitives from justice, the privilege of trial by jury in the States from which they are charged with having fled, will submit quietly to the operation of the law, and if necessary, aid its ministers in enforcing  it.