My feeeeeelings on the matter are immaterial.
The question is were they Constitutional? The US Supreme Court said they were not.
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Again, if the northern states had a problem with the Constitutional provisions that they had previously agreed to, the burden was on them to get them changed.
Hence the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment.
The purpose of the trial was to determine if such a person was indeed in the class of “owed service or labor” with a presumption that it was not.
What court case was it that held that the personal liberty laws were constitutional?
Prigg v. Pennsylvania, per your link, Thankyou!
And Prigg v. Pennsylvania held that the recovery of fugitive slaves was exclusively a federal matter, that state officials could neither help nor hinder. Subsequent legislation by the free states gave similar guidance to state officials.
Without the cooperation of the state officials, the southern hotheads were unable to kidnap enough fugitive slaves. So that became the complaint of the slave power: That the northern officials, enjoined from either helping or hindering by both SCOTUS case law and state law, were actually following the law.
So in the event, it was the southern slave power that wanted to change the constitution to enslave all citizens to serve their interests, contrary to the limits handed down by Prigg v. Pennsylvania.
I didn’t mention feelings. Why did you? No logic or ethics to support slavery?