Let the kidnappers come up and say, "Massachusetts! knowest thou whether this be thy son's coat or not?"
Let Massachusetts answer: "It is my son's coat! An evil beast hath devoured him. Thomas is without doubt rent in pieces!"
Yes, Massachusetts! that is right. It was an evil beast that devoured him, worse than the lion which comes up from the swelling of Jordan: it was a kidnapper. Thomas was rent with whips! Go, Massachusetts! keep thy trophies from Lexington. I will keep this to remind me of Boston, and her dark places, which are full of cruelty.
After the formation of the Union, a monument was erected at Beacon Hill, to commemorate the chief events which led to the American Revolution, and helped secure liberty and independence. Some of you remember the inscriptions thereon. If a monument were built to commemorate the events which are connected with the recent "Salvation of the Union," the inscriptions might be:—
Union saved by Daniel Webster's Speech at "Washington, March 7, 1850.
Union saved by Daniel "Webster's Speech at Boston, April 30, 1850,
Union saved by the Passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill, Sept. 18, 1850.
Union saved by the arrival of Kidnapper Hughes at Boston, Oct. 19, 1850.
Union saved by the "Union Meeting" at Faneuil Hall, Nov. 26, 1853.
Union saved by kidnapping Thomas Sims at Boston, April 3, 1851.
Union saved by the Rendition of Thomas Sims at Savannah, April 19, 1851.—
"Oh, what a glorious morning is this!"
Sicut Patribus sit Deus Nobis.[1]
The great deeds of the American Revolution were also commemorated by medals. The Boston kidnapping is worthy of such commemoration, and would be an appropriate subject for a medal, which might bear on one side a bas-relief of the last scene of that act: the Court-house in chains; the victim in the hollow square of Boston police, their swords and bludgeons in their hands. The motto might be—The Great Object of Government is the Protection of Property at Home.[2] The other side might bear a Boston church, surrounded by shops and taverns taller than itself, with the twofold inscription: No Higher Law; and, I would send back my own Mother.
What a change from the Boston of John Hancock to the
