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Nicolay and Hay in Volume 3 of their book Abraham Lincoln, A History noted that a careful 1860 study of the personal liberty laws by the National Intelligencer found that the personal liberty laws of Vermont, Massachusetts, Michigan and Wisconsin were clearly unconstitutional.

About the same time, three distinguished jurists in Massachusetts led a host of other lawyers in declaring that the Massachusetts laws were unconstitutional and saying that these laws could lead to secession. The three were the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, a former member of the US Supreme Court who had resigned in protest of the Dred Scott decision, and a Harvard constitutional law professor who had been Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

Appeals to change these laws came too late.

Only because the fire-eaters were so intent on secession. Actually, it looks like the system was more or less working. Southern states complained about the personal liberty laws, and Northern states made efforts to change them. Whether doing so was morally right or not, it did make practical sense as a compromise measure.

The National Intelligencer, a proslavery paper known for its advertisements of slave auctions and announcements about runaways, made the point that not all personal liberty laws were unconstitutional -- "only" those of Vermont, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Efforts were made to change those laws to conform to the Constitution, as well as other laws in other states, but by this point proslavery forces were already set on secession.

There's more at google books, here, here, and here.

[rustbucket]

Thanks for the links. Yes, I was aware that some Northern states started trying to repeal or fix their personal liberty laws once it became obvious what they had wrought. I've mentioned this in posts before. But their revisions were too late, as I said.

You term the National Intelligencer "a proslavery paper known for its advertisements of slave auctions and announcements about runaways." Nicolay and Hay say the following about it [Link]. (This was where I got the list of states whose laws they considered unconstitutional.)

The editors of the "National Intelligencer," who certainly could not be accused of a desire to misrepresent either the North or the South, printed in their issue of December 11, 1860, a careful review of all Northern personal liberty laws.

Were Nicolay and Hay being tongue-in-check in their characterization of the paper? Certainly the Massachusetts lawyers weren't tongue-in-check in their concern about their local law.

The old newspaper article that alerted me to the statement of the three distinguished jurists and other lawyers in Massachusetts was published in the Philadelphia Public Ledger on December 20, 1860. What a date! It was too late.

One of your links mentions the effort of Massachusetts to change their law. Massachusetts hadn't returned a fugitive slave since 1854. Indeed, there were a large number of escaped slaves living openly in Massachusetts. My impression from one of my hundreds of old newspaper copies was that the Massachusetts legislature only did window dressing on their personal liberty law in 1861 and did not fix the problem. I'd have to track that statement down -- I don't have my papers indexed yet. I do not know what changes they made as they were not reported in my old newspaper.