“SECTION 4....  And neither the importer, nor any person or persons claiming from or under him, shall hold any right or title whatsoever to any negro, mulatto, or person of color, nor to the service or labor thereof, who may be imported or brought within the United States, or territories thereof, in violation of this law, but the same shall remain subject to any regulations not contravening the provisions of this act, which the Legislatures of the several States or Territories at any time hereafter may make, for disposing of any such negro, mulatto, or person of color."[32]

57. The Second Question:  How shall Violations be punished? The next point in importance was that of the punishment of offenders.  The half-dozen specific propositions reduce themselves to two:  1.  A violation should be considered a crime or felony, and be punished by death; 2.  A violation should be considered a misdemeanor, and be punished by fine and imprisonment.[33]

Advocates of the severer punishment dwelt on the enormity of the offence.  It was “one of the highest crimes man could commit,” and “a captain of a ship engaged in this traffic was guilty of murder."[34] The law of God punished the crime with death, and any one would rather be hanged than be enslaved.[35] It was a peculiarly deliberate crime, in which the offender did not act in sudden passion, but had ample time for reflection.[36] Then, too, crimes of much less magnitude are punished with death.  Shall we punish the stealer of $50 with death, and the man-stealer with imprisonment only?[37] Piracy, forgery, and fraudulent sinking of vessels are punishable with death, “yet these are crimes only against property; whereas the importation of slaves, a crime committed against the liberty of man, and inferior only to murder or treason, is accounted nothing but a misdemeanor."[38] Here, indeed, lies the remedy for the evil of freeing illegally imported Negroes,—­in making the penalty so severe that none will be brought in; if the South is sincere, “they will unite to a man to execute the law."[39] To free such Negroes is dangerous; to enslave them, wrong; to return them, impracticable; to indenture them, difficult,—­therefore, by a death penalty, keep them from being imported.[40] Here the East had a chance to throw back the taunts of the South, by urging the South to unite with them in hanging the New England slave-traders, assuring the South that “so far from charging their Southern brethren with cruelty or severity in hanging them, they would acknowledge the favor with gratitude."[41] Finally, if the Southerners would refuse to execute so severe a law because they did not consider the offence great, they would probably refuse to execute any law at all for the same reason.[42]