In thus uniting with the clause providing for the extradition of fugitives from justice one requiring the return of fugitive slaves, Congress was but following examples set in 1643 by the Articles of Confederation,[74] and again in 1787 by the Constitution.[75] From the scanty records, it is possible to discern only that there was serious difference of opinion in the Senate, and that the measure finally adopted was probably a compromise. In the one amendment stated, there is a faint protest against the harshness of the law.[76]
=§ 18. Discussion of the first act.=--The provisions of the act of 1793 are quoted elsewhere;[77] their purport was as follows. The act provided at the same time for the recovery of fugitives from justice and from labor; but the alleged criminal was to have a protection through the requirement of a requisition, a protection denied to the man on trial for his liberty only. The act was applicable to fugitive apprentices as well as to slaves, a provision of some importance at the time. In the Northwest Territory there were so-called negro apprentices, who were virtually slaves, and to whom the law applied, since it was in terms extended to all the Territories. Proceedings began with the forcible seizure of the alleged fugitive.
The act, it will be observed, does not admit a trial by jury. It allowed the owner of the slave, his agent or attorney, to seize the fugitive and take him before any judge of a United States Circuit or District Court, or any local magistrate.[78] The only requirement for the conviction of the slave was the testimony of his master, or the affidavit of some magistrate in the State from which he came, certifying that such a person had escaped. Hindering arrest or harboring a slave was punishable by a fine of five hundred dollars. The law thus established a system allowing the greatest harshness to the slave and every favor to the master. Even at that time, when persons might still be born slaves in New York and New Jersey, and gradual emancipation had not yet taken full effect in Rhode Island and Connecticut, it was repellent to the popular sense of justice; there were two cases of resistance to the principle of the act before the close of 1793.[79]