The Constitution of the United States of America, Article IV, Section 2., paragraph 3

"[No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, Shall, in Consequences of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up [1] on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour [2] may be due.]*"

"*Changed by the 13th Amendment. [3]

1. "Shall be delivered up," means that the inhabitants of the state to which a runaway fled would be charged with his capture and with holding him until the owner should appear. This would be the point of tension in later years, between slave states and free states in which citizens were legally bound to act as slave catchers!This was written as a definitive rebuttal to the Northwest Territory Ordinance of 1783, drafted, voted on and ratified by poor whites who had survived or escaped servitude as indentures, redemptioners, kidnapping victims, debtors or convict transports. From 1787 until 1865, the United States was clearly, legislatively, an overt slave nation, in which any unpropertied man or woman was liable to be taken into forced labor at any time on a wide variety of charges.

2. Service was what we would refer to as slavery, in which the person was totally dependent on his master for all things, had to live where the master said and do everything the master required under threat of force. Most Americans arriving before 1800 on these shores lived some, most or all of their lives under these conditions. Labour, however, was labor required to pay off a debt. For instance, infamous Indian killer "Liver Eating" Johnson, began his life of adventure when he ran away from home at age 16 rather than continue to serve as forced labour to pay off his drunken father's debts.

3. The 13th Amendment, among other things, confirms the fact, that according to the Constitution, there was no legal difference between an escaped white servant and an escaped negro servant.