[in United States Senate, December 18, I860.]
A joint resolution (§
50) proposing certain amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
Whereas, Serious and alarming dissensions have arisen
between the Northern and Southern States concerning the rights and security of
the rights of the slaveholding states, and especially the rights in the common
territory of the United States; and
Whereas, It is eminently desirable and proper that
these dissensions, which now threaten the very existence of this Union, should
be permanently quieted and settled by constitutional provisions which shall do
equal justice to all sections, and thereby restore to the people that peace and
good-will which ought to prevail between all citizens of the United States;
therefore,
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled (two thirds of both
houses concurring), That the following articles he and are hereby proposed and
submitted as Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, which shall
be valid to all intents and purposes as part of said Constitution, when
ratified by conventions of three fourths of the several states:
Article 1. In
all the territory of the United States now held, or hereafter acquired, situate
north of latitude 36° 30', slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime, is prohibited while such territory shall remain under
territorial government. In all the territory south of said line of latitude
slavery of the African race is hereby recognized as existing and shall not be
interfered with by Congress, but shall be protected as property by all the
departments of the territorial government during its continuance. And when any
territory north or south of said line, within such boundaries as Congress may
prescribe, shall contain the population requisite for a member of Congress
according to the then federal ratio of representation of the people of the
United States, it shall, if its form of government be republican, be admitted
into the Union on an equal footing with the original states, with or without
slavery, as the constitution of such new state may provide.
Article 2.
Congress shall have no power to abolish slavery in places under its exclusive
jurisdiction, and situate within the limits of states that permit the holding
of slaves.
Article 3.
Congress shall have no power to abolish slavery within the District of Columbia
so long as it exists in the adjoining states of Virginia and Maryland, or
either, nor without the consent of the inhabitants, nor without just
compensation first made to such owners of slaves as do not consent to such
abolishment. Nor shall Congress at any time prohibit officers of the Federal
Government, or members of Congress, whose duties require them to be in said
district, from bringing with them their slaves, and holding them as such during
the time their duties may require them to remain there, and afterwards taking
them from the district.
ARTICLE 4. Congress shall have no power to prohibit or
hinder the transportation of slaves from one state to another, or to a
territory in which slaves are by law permitted to he held, whether that
transportation be by land, navigable rivers, or by the sea.
Article 5.
That in addition to the provisions of the third paragraph of the second section
of the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States, Congress shall
have power to provide by law, and it shall he its duty so to provide, that the
United States shall pay to the owner who shall apply for it the full value of
his fugitive slave in all cases when the marshal or other officer whose duty it
was to arrest said fugitive was prevented from so doing by violence or
intimidation, or when, after arrest, said fugitive was rescued by force, and
the owner thereby prevented and obstructed in the pursuit of his remedy for the
recovery of his fugitive slave under the said clause of the Constitution, and
the laws made in pursuance thereof. And in all such cases, when the United
States shall pay for such fugitive, they shall have the right, in their own
name, to sue the county in which said violence, intimidation, or rescue was
committed, and to recover from it, with interest and damages, the amount paid
by them for said fugitive slave. And the said county, after it has paid said
amount to the United States, may, for its indemnity, sue and recover from the
wrong-doers or rescuers by whom the owner was prevented from the recovery of
his fugitive slave, in like manner ns the owner himself might have sued and
recovered.
Article 6. No
future amendment of the Constitution shall affect the five preceding articles;
nor the third paragraph of the second section of the fourth article of said
Constitution; and no amendment shall be made to the Constitution which shall
authorize or give to Congress any power to abolish or interfere with slavery in
any of the states by whose laws it is, or may be, allowed or permitted.
And Whereas, also, besides those causes of dissension
embraced in the foregoing amendments proposed to the Constitution of the United
States, there are others which come within the jurisdiction of Congress, and
may be remedied by its legislative power; and
Whereas, It is the desire of Congress, as far as its
power will extend, to remove all just cause for the popular discontent and
agitation which now disturb the peace of the country and threaten the stability
of its institutions; therefore,
1. Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the laws now in
force for the recovery of fugitive slaves are in strict pursuance of the plain
and mandatory provisions of the Constitution, and have been sanctioned as valid
and constitutional by the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States;
that the slave-holding states are entitled to the faithful observance and
execution of those laws, and that they ought not to be repealed or so modified
or changed as to impair their efficiency; and that laws ought to be made for
the punishment of those who attempt, by rescue of the slave or other illegal
means, to hinder or defeat the due execution of said laws.
2. That all state laws which conflict with the fugitive-slave
acts of Congress, or any other constitutional acts of Congress, or which, in
their operation, impede, hinder, or delay the free course and due execution of
any of said acts, are null and void by the plain provisions of the Constitution
of the United States; yet those state laws, void as they are, have given color
to practices, and led to consequences, which have obstructed the duo
administration and execution of acts of Congress, and especially the acts for
the delivery of fugitive slaves, and have thereby contributed much to the
discord and commotion now prevailing. Congress, therefore, in the present
perilous juncture, does not deem it improper respectfully and earnestly to
recommend the repeal of those laws to the several states which have enacted
them, or such legislative corrections or explanations of them as may prevent
their being used or perverted to such mischievous purposes.
3. That the act of September 18, 1850, commonly called the
Fugitive-slave Law, ought to be so amended as to make the fee of the
commissioner, mentioned in the eighth section of the act, equal in amount in
the cases decided by him, whether his decision be in favor of or against the
claimant. And to avoid misconstruction, the last clause of the fifth section of
said act, which authorizes the person holding a warrant for the arrest or
detention of a fugitive slave to summon to his aid the posse comitatus, and
which declares it to be the duty of all good citizens to assist him in its
execution, ought to be so amended as to expressly limit the authority and duty
to cases in which there shall be resistance, or danger of resistance, or
rescue.
4. That the laws for the suppression of the African
slave-trade, and especially those prohibiting the importation of slaves in the United
States, ought to be made effectual, and ought to be thoroughly executed; and
all further enactments necessary to those ends ought to be promptly made.
SOURCES: George Ticknor Curtis, Constitutional History of the United States from Their Declaration of Independence
to the Close of Their Civil War, Volume 2 , p. 525-8 which sites as its
source Congressional Globe, Part I.,
Second Session, Thirty-sixth Congress, p. 114, Dec. 18, 1860.
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