A LITTLE-KNOWN FACT ABOUT THE FUGITIVE SLAVE CLAUSE
ARTICLE IV, SECTION 2, CLAUSE 3
(Read the clause in context here.)
Eastman Johnson, A Ride for Liberty—The Fugitive Slaves, painted about 1862
People need to know the background of the final draft of this provision. The clause ensured
the return upon claim of any “Person held to Service or Labour” in one state who had escaped to another state. At the last minute, the phrase “Person legally held to Service or Labour in one state” was amended to read “Person held to Service or Labour in one state, under the Laws thereof.” This revision emphasized that slaves were held according to the laws of individual states and, as the historian Don Fehrenbacher has noted, “made it impossible to infer from the passage that the Constitution itself legally sanctioned slavery.” Indeed, none of these clauses recognized slavery as having any legitimacy from the point of view of federal law.