In the case of Texas, the North had everything to gain
and nothing to lose by the application of the practice of geographical
compromise on an arbitrary line. In the case of California, the
conditions were reversed; the South might have been the gainer and the
North the loser by a recognition of the same rule.
The compensation which it was alleged that the South received was a more
effective law for the rendition of fugitives from service or labor. But
it is to be remarked that this law provided for the execution by the
General Government of obligations which had been imposed by the Federal
compact upon the several States of the Union. The benefit to be derived
from a fulfillment of that law would be small in comparison with the
evil to result from the plausible pretext that the States had thus been
relieved from a duty which they had assumed in the adoption of the
compact of union. Whatever tended to lead the people of any of the
States to feel that they could be relieved from their constitutional
obligations by transferring them to the General Government, or that they
might thus or otherwise evade or resist them, could not fail to be like
the tares which the enemy sowed amid the wheat. The union of States,
formed to secure the permanent welfare of posterity and to promote
harmony among the constituent States, could not, without changing its
character, survive such alienation as rendered its parts hostile to the
security, prosperity, and happiness of one another.
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