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but it would be wholly inconsistent with the fundamental principles of our Government, and the purposes for which it was established, as well as with its policy in prohibiting the slave trade and giving freedom to its victims. 

The recovery of slaves for their owners, whether foreign or domestic, is a matter with which the Executive of the United States has no concern. The Constitution confers upon the Government no power to establish or legalize the institution of slavery. It recognizes it as existing in regard to persons held to service by the laws of the States which tolerate it; and contains a compact between the States, obliging them to respect the rights acquired under the slave laws of other States in the cases specified in the Constitution. But it imposes no duty, and confers no power on the Government of the United States to act in regard to it. So far as the compact extends, the courts of the United States, whether sitting in a free State or a slave State, will give effect to it. Beyond that, all persons within the limits of  a State are entitled to the protection of its laws. 

If these Africans had been taken from the possession of their Spanish claimants, and wrongfully brought into the United States by our citizens, a question would have been presented similar to that which existed in the case of the Antelope. But when men have come here voluntarily, without any wrong on the part of the Government or citizens of the United States, in withdrawing them from the jurisdiction of the Spanish laws, why should this Government be required to become active in their restoration? They appear here as freemen. They are in a State where they are presumed to be free. They stand before our courts on equal ground with their claimants; and when the courts, after an impartial hearing with all parties in interest before them, have pronounced them free, it is neither the duty nor the right of the Executive of the United States to interfere with the decision.

The question of the surrender of fugitive slaves to a foreign claimant, if the right exists at all, is left to the comity of the States which tolerate slavery. The Government of the United States has nothing to do with it. In the letter of instruction addressed by Mr. Adams, when Secretary of State, to Messrs. Gallatin and Rush, dated Nov. 2, 1818, in relation to a proposed arrangement with Great Britain for a more active co-operation in the suppression of the slave trade, he assigns as a reason for rejecting the proposition for a mixed commission "that the disposal of the negroes found on board the slave-trading vessels which might be condemned by the sentence of the mixed courts cannot be