There is no constitutional requirement to respect anti-slavery laws. There IS a constitutional requirement for Free states to recognize slave laws.
This is the sort of deal, that if you don't like it, you don't agree to it.
Requiring slave owners to abide by anti-slavery laws is an obvious infringement upon the rights which ARE written in the Constitution. You cannot forbid a man from traveling, and you cannot forbid him from bringing his slaves into a "free state."
According to the law of the time, they belonged to him, not the state or the people in the state.
A correct reading of the law during that time period offers NO SUPPORT for free states to ban slavery. None.
They can decree that people subsequently born in their states cannot be slaves, but they can do nothing to stop people from bringing in slaves born in other states.
It would have required a constitutional amendment to accomplish that.
In fact, Washington conscientiously followed the letter of Pennsylvania's anti-slavery laws by cycling his slaves in and out within the allowed time period.
You do realize that what you have said is an utter contradiction of your point? He "Flaunted" their laws by "cycling his slaves in and out within the allowed time period."
This is what we call a "loop hole" big enough to drive a truck through. The bottom line is this. Washington maintained slaves in Pennsylvania after Pennsylvania had banned slavery.
No, in fact, the Constitution authorizes Congress to control, or abolish, the international slave trade, and Founders themselves also outlawed slavery in what were then called "western territories".
So any suggestion that Congress had no authority over slavery is just bogus.
As for Northern anti-slavery laws, there was no suggestion in our Founders' time -- none, nada -- that states had no right to abolish slavery.
So the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision to the contrary was new law, and therefore unconstitutional.
That makes your argument here totally bogus to the max.
DiogenesLamp: "A correct reading of the law during that time period offers NO SUPPORT for free states to ban slavery. None."
Except that nobody in 1787 or anytime later, asserted what you now ludicrously proclaim.
Your logic is based solely on the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision, not on Founders' original intentions.
DiogenesLamp: "The bottom line is this. Washington maintained slaves in Pennsylvania after Pennsylvania had banned slavery."
But only within the limits allowed by Pennsylvania law.