Sec.5.  In the same section it is provided, that “no person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”  This clause was intended for the benefit of the slaveholding states.  By the common law, a slave escaping into a non-slaveholding state became free.  As it was presumed that other northern states would follow Massachusetts in abolishing slavery, the southern states wanted some provision to enable them to reclaim their fugitive slaves.

Sec.6.  The manner in which slaves are to be reclaimed, is prescribed by an act of congress.  The owner of a runaway slave, finding him in a free state, arrests him and brings him before a magistrate; and if he proves his title to the slave to the satisfaction of the magistrate, the slave is delivered to the owner or claimant.  Free colored persons have sometimes been arrested, and, on false testimony, delivered to claimants, taken to slave states and held as slaves.  Hence the opinion prevails extensively that a person claimed as a slave should be entitled to trial by a jury; and that the fact of his being a slave should be proved to the satisfaction of a jury before his delivery to a claimant.  Many persons, believing freedom to be the natural right of all men, hold that all laws for returning fugitive slaves are wrong, and ought not to be obeyed.

Sec.7.  The first clause of the next section provides, that “new states may be admitted into this union,” and requires the consent of congress and of the states concerned, to the formation of new states from old ones.  A provision of this kind was deemed necessary in view of the large extent of vacant lands within the United States, and of the inconvenient size of some of the states then existing.  The territory north-west of the Ohio river had been ceded to the general government by the states claiming the same; and a territorial government had already been established therein by the celebrated ordinance of 1787.  From this territory have since been formed and admitted, the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Sec.8.  South of the Ohio river also was a large tract, principally unsettled, within the chartered limits of Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, extending west to the Mississippi river, from which, it was presumed, new states would be formed.  Justice, however, to these states, as well as to others in all future time, required the general provision above mentioned, that “no state should be divided without the consent of its legislature and of congress.”

Sec.9.  The next clause authorizes congress “to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory and other property of the United States.”  If the general government has power to acquire territory, it must have the right to exercise authority over it.  This express grant establishes beyond doubt a power which had been questioned under the confederation.  In pursuance of the power here granted, congress has made rules and regulations for governing the people of different portions of such territory previously to their admission as states into the union.