You remember the tone of the newspapers. Whig and Democratic. With alacrity they went for kidnapping to the fullest extent. They clasped hands in order to seize the black man. When the time came, Mr. Eliot gave the vote of Boston for the Fugitive Slave Bill. When he returned to his home, some of the most prominent men of the city went and thanked him for his vote. They liked it. I believe no "eminent man" of Boston spoke against it. They "strained their consciences," as Mr. Walley has just said, "to aid in the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act." Boston fired a hundred guns on the Common, at noon-day, in honour of that event.
I know there was opposition—earnest and fierce opposition; but it did not come from the citizens of "eminent gravity," whom Boston and Massachusetts are accustomed stupidly to follow. You know what hatred was felt in Boston against all men who taught that the natural law of God was superior to the Fugitive Slave Bill, and Conscience above the Constitution.
You have not forgotten the "Union meeting" in Faneuil Hall. I never saw so much meanness and so little manhood on that platform. The Democratic Herods and the Whig Pilates were made friends that day that they might kidnap the black man. You recollect the howl of derision against the Higher Law of God, which came from that ignoble stage, and was echoed by that ignoble crowd above it and below—speakers fit for fitting theme.
When the Fugitive Slave Bill was proposed, prominent men said, "It cannot pass: the North will reject it at once; and, even if it were passed, it would be repealed the next day. We will petition for its repeal." After it was passed, they said: "It cannot be executed, and never will be." But, when asked to petition for its repeal, the same men refused—"No, it would irritate the South." I received the petitions which our fellow-citizens sent from more than three hundred towns in Massachusetts. I took the smallest of them all, and sent it to the representative
of Boston, Mr. Eliot, with a letter, asking him to present it to the House. He presented it—to me! It was not "laid on the table;" he put it in the post-office. I sent it back to Washington, to some Southern or Western member, and he presented it in Congress.
