Just to be perfectly clear, we are discussing the US Constitution of 1787, Article IV Section 2 clause 3. Also known, more widely and to be historically honest, as the Fugitive Slave Clause. As Abe said, in his first Inaugural, "There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:
No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law." A. Lincoln
But of course you DL have to come along and not only question this "scarcely questioned" clause but you must impart a whole new meaning that no else can quite fathom. Why, it is as if you have an agenda.
As for this: DL "The most liberal reading of Article IV Section 2 cannot yield such an interpretation. It only says they will be returned, it says nothing about "six months".
For your information, the Pennsylvania Act of 1780 predates the US Constitution. It is also known as An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, passed by the Pennsylvania legislature on 1 March 1780, and was one of the first attempts by a government in the USA to begin an abolition of slavery. In 1783 Massachusetts abolished slavery unequivocally with no such gradual easing.
DL: It *DOES* say no state law can change the fact that the slave will be returned, so your Law of Pennsylvania is dead on arrival so far as Article IV Section 2 is concerned.
See above. You are very vague on the concept of a slave arriving in a freestate as a fugitive and a slave being brought into a freestate accompanied by his master. I can not help you with your failure to understand that any more than I have.
DL: You are welcome to show me where in Article IV it allows another state to pass a law freeing a slave held by the laws of the state where the "labor is due."
And you are equally as welcome to show me where it doesn't allow that. That did not need to be included in the narrow meaning of the clause. The clause was written after the Pennsylvania Act of 1780. Everyone who was anyone plainly understood these things at the time.
The Act prohibited further importation of slaves into the state, required Pennsylvania slaveholders to annually register their slaves (with forfeiture for noncompliance, and manumission for the enslaved), and established that all children born in Pennsylvania were free persons regardless of the condition or race of their parents.
Those enslaved in Pennsylvania before the 1780 law entered effect remained enslaved for life. Another act of the Pennsylvania legislature freed them in 1847. Pennsylvania's "gradual abolition"—rather than Massachusetts's 1783 "instant abolition"—became a model for freeing slaves in other Northern states.
1780 Amendment
The 1780 Act prohibited further importation of slaves into Pennsylvania, but it also respected the property rights of Pennsylvania slaveholders by not freeing slaves already held in the state. It changed the legal status of future children born to enslaved Pennsylvania mothers from "slave" to "indentured servant", but required those children to work for the mother's master until age 28. To verify that no additional slaves were imported, the Act created a registry of all slaves in the state. Slaveholders who failed to register their slaves annually, or who did it improperly, lost their slaves to manumission.
The 1780 Act specifically exempted members of the U.S. Congress and their personal slaves. Congress was then the only branch of the federal government under the Articles of Confederation, and met in Philadelphia.
1788 Amendment
An Amendment, created to explain and to close loopholes in the 1780 Act, was passed in the Pennsylvania legislature on 29 March 1788. The Amendment prohibited a Pennsylvania slaveholder from transporting a pregnant enslaved woman out-of-state so her child would be born enslaved; and from separating husbands from wives, and children from parents. It required a Pennsylvania slaveholder to register within six months the birth of a child to an enslaved mother. It prohibited all Pennsylvanians from participating in, building or equipping ships for, or providing material support to the slave trade.
The 1780 Act had also allowed a non-resident slaveholder visiting Pennsylvania to hold slaves in the state for up to six months. If those slaves resided any longer than six months they automatically became freemen. But a loophole was soon identified and exploited: if the non-resident slaveholder took his slaves out of Pennsylvania before the 6-month deadline, it would void his slaves' residency. The 1788 Amendment prohibited this rotation of slaves in and out-of-state to subvert Pennsylvania law.
The 1780 Act had exempted personal slaves owned by members of Congress. But by 1790, when Philadelphia became the temporary national capital for a 10-year period, there were three branches of the federal government under the U.S. Constitution. There was confusion about whether or not the Pennsylvania law extended to all federal officials; members of Congress (legislative branch) remained exempt, but there was uncertainty regarding whether justices of the U.S. Supreme Court (judicial branch) and the President of the United States and his Cabinet (executive branch) would also be exempt. Attorney General Edmund Randolph lost his personal slaves to manumission due to his misunderstanding of the state law. He conveyed his advice to President George Washington through the president's secretary, Tobias Lear:
"This being the case, the Attorney General conceived, that after six months residence, your slaves would be upon no better footing than his. But he observed, that if, before the expiration of six months, they could, upon any pretense whatever, be carried or sent out of the State, but for a single day, a new era would commence on their return, from whence the six months must be dated for it requires an entire six months for them to claim that right."
Washington argued (privately) that his presence in Philadelphia was solely a consequence of the city being the temporary national capital, and that he remained a citizen of Virginia and subject to its laws on slavery. Still, he himself was careful not to spend six continuous months in Pennsylvania, which might be interpreted as establishing legal residency. Had he litigated the issue, it might have clarified his legal status and that of other slaveholding federal officials. But it also would have called attention to his slaveholding in the President's House, and put him at risk of losing those slaves to manumission. It was thought that he followed his Attorney General's advice, and knowingly and repeatedly violated the state's 1788 Amendment by rotating the enslaved Africans in his presidential household in and out of Pennsylvania. There is no record of Washington having been challenged for this. According to Lear, the Pennsylvania Abolition Societyseems to have turned a blind eye to the President's actions:
That the Society in this city for the abolition of slavery, had determined to give no advice and take no measures for liberating those Slaves which belonged to the Officers of the general Government or members of Congress. But notwithstanding this, there were not wanting persons who would not only give them (the Slaves) advise, but would use all means to entice them from their masters.
Because following the plain and clear text of the clause is just too complicated. Better to just accept what everyone says.
You are very vague on the concept of a slave arriving in a freestate as a fugitive and a slave being brought into a freestate accompanied by his master.
I am not vague on it at all. I note the clause says that the slave will be returned. I see no qualifications that says "under certain conditions."
It is you who somehow imagine that there are conditions under which the law means something different.
And you are equally as welcome to show me where it doesn't allow that.
I have done so a half dozen times or more. It says so in the very clause. You just don't want to accept the ugly truth of what the plain text of the law says.