Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/380

370 States commissioners the power, by summary process, to turn over a colored man or woman claimed as a fugitive slave to the claimant. It excluded from the evidence the testimony of the defendant. It “commanded” all good citizens, whenever summoned, to aid in the prompt and effective execution of the law, including the capture of the fugitive. It made the United States marshal liable for the full value of the slave, if a recaptured fugitive escaped from his custody. Whoever knowingly harbored or concealed a fugitive slave to prevent his recapture was to be punished by fine and imprisonment.

Such a law could not pacify; it could not be executed without galling men's moral sense and pride of free manhood among a people who thought slavery a great wrong, and who would never consider it sinful to help on a poor fugitive seeking his freedom. When first proposing his compromise scheme, and repeatedly during the debate, Clay had remarked that to the Northern people the question was one of sentiment, while to the South it was one of interest, and that it was easier to make a concession of sentiment than of interest. It is an important historical fact that the sentiment prevailing at the North concerning slavery never was understood by the Southern people. They regarded it as a sickly notion of visionary philanthropists, or as the outgrowth of horrible stories told in the North about the South, and artfully used by designing politicians, or as an itch-