More importantly, antislavery constitutionalists insisted that the fugitive slave clause could not be enforced in disregard of the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process. For this reason many of them viewed the two major fugitive slave laws passed by Congress in 1793 and 1850 as unconstitutional. In the decade before the Civil War some Republicans advocated open violations of the Fugitive Slave Act while others, notably Abraham Lincoln, called for obedience to the law so long as it remained on the books.34 Virtually all antislavery politicians, including Lincoln, called for the repeal or
...more
