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The Supreme Court's decisive 1842 action in striking down Pennsylvania's 1788 and 1826 (note the years!) Fugitive Slave Laws (which protected runaway slaves) left some ambiguity.

BS! That was a finding by the Appeals Court FOR the Supreme Court. Appeals Courts set LEGAL PRECEDENTS:

precedent
1) n. a prior reported opinion of an appeals court which establishes the legal rule (authority) in the future on the same legal question decided in the prior judgment.
http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1573

This what's known as settled law. The question cannot be re-asked, if you allow it, there can never BE any 'settled law'.

At that point, the only LEGAL way to change it would be for the northern states to get the Constitution changed, but they knew they couldn't do that.

But that's exactly what the northern states did. They asked, and asked, and asked... until they found a Supreme Court [not an Appeals Court] to agree with them.

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I'd like to take a moment during this emotionally charged moment to make it quite clear I'm no cheerleader for slavery. I'm here on a quest, because over a decade ago, some blatantly Unconstitutional garbage was [yet again] spewed out by Congress.

I decided...THAT DAY., I was going to find out where my rights went.

After mucking about the Codes until my brain felt fried, logic dictated [SHOUTED really] to just go back to the beginning.

So I did.

What I found, for me, clarifies a great many of the Founders words concerning natural rights, the laws of Nature, natural law...etc.

We all know we came from England, so England's laws affect ours. What we were never told is that at about the same time, a Frenchman was coming up with basically the same ideas as Blackstone, but on a more natural, individual basis and how that individual relates within a nation, and how nations relate within each other.

The Founder's held both these works in high regard.

Ordered, That the Secretary purchase Blackstone's Commentaries, and Vattel's Law of Nature and Nations, for the use of the Senate.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America / Monday / March 10, 1794 / Volume 2 / page 44

IMHO, in order to lessen English influence, they used Vattel more for the federal government. Blackstone, for all practical purposes was already in the states as it came with the colonists.

This still hold true. [Don't believe me? Go back to the law.com dictionary and look up the term Natural Law]

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To believe these facts or not is purely your choice, but until you see where it all went wrong, without that 'slave power' thing rolling around in your head, you never WILL see it.

And, with all Due Respect, I have no desire to continue to engage in a virtual 'pissin' contest' because you can't.

I do appreciate your responses, but political persuasions DO NOT dictate Constitutional Law. That's what the damn thing was written to prevent.

I bid you adieu, Good Sir.
MamaTexan

MamaTexan post #257, on Prigg vs Pennsylvania, responding to the accurate statement that: "The Supreme Court's decisive 1842 action in striking down Pennsylvania's 1788 and 1826 (note the years!) Fugitive Slave Laws (which protected runaway slaves) left some ambiguity":

"BS! That was a finding by the Appeals Court FOR the Supreme Court.
Appeals Courts set LEGAL PRECEDENTS:"

I don't understand either the source of your confusion here, or the reason for your outburst.

The basic facts of Prigg vs Pennsylvania are well known:

On December 12, 1787 Pennsylvania ratified the new US Constitution, including its provisions requiring the return of fugitive slaves to their owners.
Three months later, on March 29, 1788, the Pennsylvania legislature amended its 1780 law abolishing slavery as follows:
In other words: forbidding the return of fugitive slaves to their owners.
As of the date of Pennsylvania's new law protecting fugitive slaves, neither Maryland, South Carolina, Virginia nor North Carolina had yet ratified the new Constitution.
And yet over the next 18 months they all did so, despite Pennsylvania's preexisting law protecting fugitive slaves!
Therefore it it totally impossible to pretend that Northern Laws protecting fugitive slaves were adequate cause for secession when such law never stopped a single state from ratifying the new Constitution.
On February 12, 1793, the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 thus satisfying the Constitution's requirement that runaways be returned.
On March 27, 1826, Pennsylvania enacted further legal protections for fugitive slaves.
This new Pennsylvania law did not bring about threats of secession by any slave-state.
On April 1, 1837, Edward Prigg kidnapped a slave and her children (one free born) from York Country in Pennsylvania, returning and selling them in Maryland.
In 1839 a local York County PA court convicted Prigg of a felony, kidnapping, based on Pennsylvania's long-standing law.
In 1842 the US Supreme Court overturned Pennsylvania's laws as unconstitutional and reversed Prigg's conviction.
But in writing his opinion, Chief Justice Story added some ambiguity which opened the door for Northern states to pass new laws which only protected fugitive slaves to the degree that they prevented local authorities from enforcing federal laws.
Some northern states soon passed such weak laws.
But even these laws, weak as they were, were soon overturned by the Compromise of 1850.

So here's the bottom line: Northern laws protecting fugitive slaves never prevented a single slave-state from joining the union in 1788.
Nor did they ever cause a slave state to secede before 1860.
All such laws were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1842, but the Supreme's ambiguous language allowed some states to pass very weak protections for fugitive slaves.

But even those new laws were eliminated by the Compromise of 1850.

In short: all such claims -- that Northern fugitive slave laws were a material breech of contract justifying South Carolina's declaration of secession -- are totally bogus to the max.

There was no breech of contract, and no cause for secession.
South Carolina declared secession "at pleasure" because of the 100% constitutional election of Abraham Lincoln's anti-slavery Republicans.

So South Carolina's 1860 declaration of secession was unconstitutional, and it's unlawful violent assaults on and seizures of Federal property were acts of insurrection, rebellion and "domestic violence."

When the Confederacy formally declared war on the United States, on May 6, 1861, its fate was sealed.