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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.

You do the bait and switch. Nobody said anything about Congress. What I said was STATES had to respect the constitutional requirement to return slaves to their masters. I said that the wording in that clause of the constitution makes it virtually impossible to ban slavery.

So if you have a constitutional LAW that says "free states" must return slaves to their masters, how "free" can a state be? It can't, unless those states defy the constitution.

Your logic is based solely on the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision, not on Founders' original intentions.

My logic is based on the fact that they put those words in the US Constitution, and I can see no way a free state can get around them without violating that requirement.

I say the Dred Scott decision was correct as a matter of law, because that's the consequence I see of states abiding by that requirement. You can't get rid of slavery in your state if your state is required to return fugitive slaves to their masters.

So long as the slave is held by the laws of another state, no free state can legally free him.

But only within the limits allowed by Pennsylvania law.

A courtesy on his part. I think had it gone to a Federal court, the court would have ruled he could do whatever he wanted because the State of Pennsylvania could not lawfully deprive him of his property.

DiogenesLamp: "You do the bait and switch.
Nobody said anything about Congress."

No "bait and switch" since the subject of state laws is addressed in my very next paragraph.
Read and comprehend, FRiend.

DiogenesLamp: "...STATES had to respect the constitutional requirement to return slaves to their masters.
I said that the wording in that clause of the constitution makes it virtually impossible to ban slavery."

And I reminded you, for the umpteenth time: that no Founder -- none, zero, nada -- ever made such a ludicrous argument, in either 1787 or any time later.
Instead, your argument was concocted out of thin air, just as more recent Supreme Court rulings have been concocted, and was in no way consistent with Founders' Original Intent.

DiogenesLamp: "My logic is based on the fact that they put those words in the US Constitution, and I can see no way a free state can get around them without violating that requirement."

But you cannot point to a single Founder who read our Constitution the way you read it, and therefore, by definition, your argument is bogus to the max.

DiogenesLamp: "A courtesy on his part.
I think had it gone to a Federal court, the court would have ruled he could do whatever he wanted because the State of Pennsylvania could not lawfully deprive him of his property."

But, of course, he never did that, doubtless because he had no desire or need to, and because no Founder ever expressed the view that states could not constitutionally abolish slavery.

So your argument, like the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, is pure fantasy and bogus to the max.