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Passed April 6,
1841.
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No. 9.
Report and Resolutions in relation to the Constitutional
Rights of Slaveholders.
The committee on grievances and courts of justice "to
whom was referred so much of the Governor's message as
relates to the constitutional rights of slave holders, and the
case of Bemis and others, pending in the Supreme Court of
the United States, with the documents, " beg leave to sub-
mit the following report: The case against Bemis and others
for a supposed violation of the laws of Pennsylvania, by
the recapture of fugitive slaves, is pending in the Supreme
Court on an appeal from a court in Pennsylvania, carried up
by an arrangement heretofore made by the two States.
Your committee have every confidence that, that cause will
be decided according to the constitution and laws, and that
justice will be done in the premises; they therefore recom-
mend that no action be had by the authorities of Maryland,
while the case is undecided.
Your committee also report that the other branch of the
enquiry relates, as appears by the documents accompanying
the order of reference, to a controversy at this time pend-
ing between the States of Virginia and New-York; and as
it involves questions of the gravest character to all the
States, the committee submit their views at length.
It appears from the documents before the committee,
"that the executive of Virginia made a demand upon the
Governor of New-York, lor the surrender of Peter John-
son, Edward Smith and Isaac Gansy, attached to the
schooner Robert Center, then in New York, who were
duly charged by affidavit, regularly made, before Miles
King, mayor and justice of the peace for Norfolk, with
having feloniously stolen and taken from John G. Colley, a
certain negro slave Isaac, the property of said Colley.
The Governor of New York refused to comply with the
demand, and assigned as his reasons for the refusal, that
the right of demand and the reciprocal obligations to sur-
render fugitives from justice, between sovereign and inde-
pendent nations, as defined by the law of nations, include
only those cases in which the acts constituting the offence
charged, are recognised by the universal law of all civilized
countries; that the object of the provisions in the constitu-
tion of the United States relative to the demand of fugitives
from justice, was to recognise and establish this principle
in the mutual relation of the States as independent, equal and
sovereign communities; that the provisions applies only to
those acts, which if committed within the jurisdiction of
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