Several expressions in the provision for the surrender of fugitives from service show the essential character of the proceedings.  In the first place, the person must be, not merely charged, as in the case of fugitives from justice, but actually held to service in the State which he escaped.  In the second place, he must “be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”  These two facts—­that he was held to service, and that his service was due to his claimant—­are directly placed in issue, and must be proved.  Two necessary incidents of the delivery may also be observed.  First, it is made in the State where the fugitive is found; and, secondly, it restores to the claimant complete control over the person of the fugitive.  From these circumstances it is evident that the proceedings cannot be regarded, in any just sense, as preliminary, or ancillary to some future formal trial, but as complete in themselves, final and conclusive.

These proceedings determine on the one side the question of property, and on the other the sacred question of personal liberty in its most transcendent form,—­Liberty not merely for a day or a year, but for life, and the Liberty of generations that shall come after, so long as Slavery endures.  To these questions the Constitution, by two specific provisions, attaches Trial by Jury.  One is the familiar clause, already adduced:  “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,”—­that is, without due proceeding at law, with Trial by Jury.  Not stopping to dwell on this, I press at once to the other provision, which is still more express:  “In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of Trial by Jury shall be preserved.”  This clause, which does not appear in the Constitution as first adopted, was suggested by the very spirit of freedom.  At the close of the National Convention, Elbridge Gerry refused to sign the Constitution because, among other things, it established “a tribunal without juries, a star chamber as to civil cases.”

Many united in his opposition, and on the recommendation of the First Congress this additional safeguard was adopted as an amendment.

Opposing this Act as doubly unconstitutional from the want of power in Congress and from the denial of trial by jury, I find myself again encouraged by the example of our Revolutionary Fathers, in a case which is a landmark of history.  The parallel is important and complete.  In 1765, the British Parliament, by a notorious statute, attempted to draw money from the colonies through a stamp tax, while the determination of certain questions of forfeiture under the statute was delegated, not to the Courts of Common Law, but to Courts of Admiralty without a jury.  The Stamp Act, now execrated by all lovers of liberty, had this extent and no more.  Its passage was the signal for a general flame of opposition and indignation throughout the colonies.  It was denounced as contrary to the British Constitution, on two principal grounds—­first, as a usurpation by Parliament of powers not belonging to it, and an infraction of rights secured to the colonies; and, secondly, as a denial of Trial by Jury in certain cases of property.