US CONSTITUTION. Article IV, Section 2.No Person held to Service or Labour 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 Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
So the Constitution overrode State law? And your objection is what? That states weren't able to ignore the constitution or something?
How many constitutional clauses are you aware of that explicitly prohibits states form making a law on some particular point?
Don't like obeying the constitution? You shouldn't have agreed to it.
Aside from the fact that any law supporting slavery is reprehensible, I have no objection to the Constitution overriding state law. You miss the irony of course that when it benefited them, antebellum Southerners were all for a strong federal government. When it didn’t, they were all for states rights.
“Don’t like obeying the constitution? You shouldn’t have agreed to it.“
I wonder if anybody told John Calhoun that?
“Later that year in response to the tariff, Vice President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina anonymously penned the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, articulating the doctrine of nullification. The doctrine emphasized a state’s right to reject federal laws within its borders and questioned the constitutionality of taxing imports without the explicit goal of raising revenue.”
So here we see a prime example of how those noble and beleaguered Southern gentlemen would pick and choose, not their own cotton, but rather which side of the argument they’d take. I wonder if “Heads I win, tails you lose” was a Southern expression.