Here’s A Quick Way To Solve The Wimbledon Problem

In 2019, she had a great chance to win her 24th Grand Slam final, as she reached the final at Wimbledon. Serena Williams began – and ended – her comeback at Wimbledon after 364 days out of singles competition looking very much like someone who hadn’t competed in just that long. The Free states needed them that much? “This constitution has been adopted by the free consent of the citizens of Pennsylvania, and it is the duty of every man, whatever his station, to give it a fair and candid construction. Susan further claimed that the Fugitive Slave Clause was strictly a compact between the states and conferred no power upon the congress to enforce the duty of the Free states to deliver her up to the claimant. How is it that the Due Process Clause does not operate to qualify the power the congress asserts it can invoke, to trump all the laws of the Free States?

In Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, the people set forth in a list all of the express powers they granted Congress, concluding the list of powers with the statement that Congress can “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested in this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.” Plainly, the power to enforce the duty imposed upon the Free states in Article IV, Section 2 is not set forth in Article I, Section 8 and, therefore, cannot possibly fall within the meaning of the quoted language unless that language can somehow be reasonably invoked, because the power sought is vested in the Judicial Department of the United States, by virtue of the fact that the Fugitive Slave Clause includes the word, claim. The idea of another concurrent power in the federal and state governments appears to have been carried too far in the argument, and, if admitted, would be pregnant with the greatest mischief, and the source of perpetual collisions between the states and the general government.

It appears the first case to reach an appellate court of a State, after the passage of the Act of 1793, is Glen v. Hodges, in 1812; an action for trespass brought by Glen against Hodges for Hodges taking a black man named Harry from the possession of Glen, who claimed Harry was his slave and had escaped from New York into Vermont, where he had lived for two years before being captured. In 1819, a Maryland citizen named Glen had arrested a black man named Hall in Philadelphia and brought him before a justice of the peace, one Renshaw, for the purpose of obtaining a certificate of removal mandated by the congressional act of 1793. Justice Renshaw, instead of giving the certificate, ordered Hall incarcerated so that he might consider the issue of Hall’s status with the aid of a jury. Edwards died in 1823, and at a public sale made by his administrator Thomas Daily appealed to those in attendance, not to bid on Kate as he wished to purchase her for the sole purpose of emancipating her.

Yet, nowhere can the intelligent reader of the constitution find in it any words expressly granting to Congress the power to invade the sovereignty of the Free States for the purpose of imposing upon them a procedure which their judicial officers must follow in processing a claim made by a foreigner against an inhabitant the foreigner claims escaped as a slave from his lawful possession. Here is the principle: the fugitive is to be delivered up, on claim of his master. And why are the two classes of fugitives not delivered up , the same way? It may be admitted, that the right of a slave to be free, in consequence of being imported contrary to the Act of 1792, was a forfeiture imposed upon the owner, by way of penalty. Though the facts are not stated in the decision of the court, Susan’s owner, a citizen of Kentucky, might have brought her voluntarily into the dominion of Indiana, in which case there would be no proof of an “escape;” or the claimant’s title might be legally defective in some way. But at the very moment that this forfeiture was incurred by the owner, under the Act, a perfect right to freedom vested in the slave, by the same Act.

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