The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 06/Discourse 2
THE NEW CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.
A SERMON
PREACHED AT
The Music Hall, in Boston, on Sunday, June 4, 1854.
WITH
THE LESSON FOR THE DAY OF THE PREVIOUS SUNDAY.
INTRODUCTORY.
On Sunday, May 28, after the usual introductory services, Mr. Parker pronounced the following
LESSON FOR THE DAY.
I see by your faces, as well as by your number, what is expected of me to-day. A person has just sent me a request, asking me, " Cannot you extemporize a sermon for this day?" It is easier to do it than not. But I shall not extemporize a sermon for to-day—I shall extemporize the Scripture. I therefore pass over the Bible words, which I designed to read from the Old Testament and the New, and will take the Morning Lesson from the circumstances of the past week. The time has not come for me to preach a sermon on the great wrong now enacting in this city. The deed is not yet fully done: any counsel that I have to offer is better given elsewhere than here, at another time than now. Neither you nor I are quite calm enough today to look the matter fairly in the face and see entirely what it means. Before the events of the past week took place, I had proposed to preach this morning on the subject of war, taking my theme from the present commotions in Europe, which also will reach us, and have already. That will presently be the theme of my morning's sermon. Next Sunday, I shall preach on The perils into which America is brought at this day by the new Crime against Humanity. That is the theme for next Sunday: the other is for to-day. But before I proceed to that, I have some words to say in place of the Scripture lesson, and instead of a selection from the Old Testament prophets.
Since last we came together, there has been a man stolen in this city of our fathers. It is not the first; it may not be the last. He is now in the great slave pen in the city of Boston. He is there against the law of the Commonwealth, which, if I am rightly informed, in such cases prohibits the use of State edifices as United States gaols. I may be mistaken. Any forcible attempt to take him from that barracoon of Boston, would be wholly without use. For besides the holiday soldiers who belong to the city of Boston, and are ready to shoot down their brothers in a just or an unjust cause, any day when the city government gives them its command and its liquor, I understand that there are one hundred and eighty-four United States marines lodged in the Court House, every man of them furnished with a musket and a bayonet, with his side arms, and twenty-four ball cartridges. They are stationed also in a very strong building, and where five men, in a passage-way, about the width of this pidpit, can defend it against five-and-twenty, or a hundred. To "keep the peace," the Mayor, who, the other day "regretted the arrest" of our brother, Anthony Burns, and declared that his sympathies were wholly with the alleged fugitive—and of course wholly against the claimant and the Marshal—in order to keep the peace of the city, the Mayor must become corporal of the guard for kidnappers from Virginia. He must keep the peace of our city, and defend these guests of Boston over the graves, the unmonumented graves, of John Hancock and Samuel Adams.
A man has been killed by violence. Some say he was killed by his own coadjutors: I can easily believe it; there is evidence enough that they were greatly frightened. They were not United States soldiers, but volunteers from the streets of Boston, who, for their pay, went into the Court House to assist in kidnapping a brother man. They were so cowardly that they could not use the simple cutlasses they had in their hands, but smote right and left, like ignorant and frightened ruffians as they are. They may have slain their brother or not—I cannot tell. It is said by some that they killed him. Another story is, that he was killed by a hostile hand from without. Some say by a bullet, some by an axe, and others still by a knife. As yet nobody knows the facts. But a man has been killed. He was a volunteer in this service. He liked the business of enslaving a man, and has gone to render an account to God for his gratuitous wickedness. Twelve men have been arrested, and are now in gaol to await their examination for wilful murder!
Here, then, is one man butchered, and twelve men brought in peril of their lives. Why is this? Whose fault is it?
Some eight years ago, a Boston merchant, by his mercenaries, kidnapped a man "between Faneuil Hall and old Quincy," and carried him off to eternal slavery. Boston mechanics, the next day, held up the half-eagles which they received as pay for stealing a man. The matter was brought before the grand jury for the county of Suffolk, and abundant evidence was presented, as I understand, but they found "no bill." A wealthy merchant, in the name of trade, had stolen a black man, who, on board a ship, had come to this city, had been seized by the mercenaries of this merchant, kept by them for awhile, and then, when he escaped, kidnapped a second time in the city of Boston. Boston did not punish the deed!
The Fugitive Slave Bill was presented to us, and Boston rose up to welcome it ! The greatest man in all the North came here, and in this city told Massachusetts she must obey the Fugitive Slave Bill with alacrity — that we must all conquer our prejudices in favour of justice and the unalienable rights of man. Boston did conquer her prejudices in favour of justice and the imalienable rights of man.
Do you not remember the "Union Meeting" which was held in Faneuil Hall, when a "political soldier of fortune," sometimes called the "Democratic Prince of the Devils," howled at the idea that there was a law of God higher than the Fugitive Slave Bill? He sneered, and asked, "Will you have the 'Higher Law of God^ to rule over you?" and the multitude which occupied the floor, and the multitude that crowded the galleries, howled down the Higher Law of God ! They treated the Higher Law to a laugh and a howl ! That was Tuesday night. It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving-day. On that Thanks- giving-day, I told the congregation that the men who howled down the Higher Law of Almighty God, had got Almighty God to settle with; that they had sown the wind, and would reap the whirlwind. At that meeting Mr. Choate told the people—"REMEMBER! Remember! Remember!" Then nobody knew what to "remember." Now you know. That is the state of that case.
Then you "remember" the kidnappers came here to seize Thomas Sims. Thomas Sims was seized. Nine days he was on trial for more than his life ; and never saw a judge—never saw a jury. He was sent back into bondage from the city of Boston. You remember the chains that were put around the Court House; you remember the judges of Massachusetts stooping, crouching, creeping, crawling under the chain of Slavery, in order to get to their own courts. All these things you "remember." Boston was non-resistant. She gavp ner "back to the smiters"—from the South; she "withheld not her cheek"—from the scorn of South Carolina, and welcomed the "spitting" of kidnappers from Georgia and Virginia. To-day we have our pay for such conduct. You have not forgotten the "fifteen hundred gentlemen of property and standing," who volunteered to conduct Mr. Sims to slavery—Marshal Tukey's "gentlemen," They "remember" it. They are sorry enough now. Let us forgive—we need not forget. "REMEMBER! Remember! Remember!""
The Nebraska Bill has just now been passed. Who passed it? The fifteen hundred " gentlemen of property and standing" in Boston, who, in 1851, volunteered to carry Thomas Sims into slavery by force of arms. They passed the Nebraska Bill. If Boston had punished the kidnapping of 1845, there would have been no Fugitive Slave Bill in 1850. If Massachusetts, in 1850, had declared the Bill should not be executed, the kidnapper would never have shown his face in the streets of Boston. If, failing in this, Boston had said, in 1851, "Thomas Sims shall not be carried off,V and forcibly or peacefully, by the majesty of the great mass of men, had resisted it, no kidnapper would have come here again. There would have been no Nebraska Bill. But to every demand of the slave power, Massachusetts has said, "Yes, yes!—we grant it all!" "Agitation must cease!" "Save the Union!"
Southern Slavery is an institution which is in earnest. Northern Freedom is an institution that is not in earnest. It was in earnest in '76 and '83. It has not been much in earnest since. The compromises are but provisional! Slavery is the only finality! Now, since the Nebraska Bill is passed, an attempt is made to add insult to insult, injury to injury. Last week, at New York, a brother of the Rev. Dr. Pennington, an established clergyman, of large reputation, great character, acknowledged learning, who has his diploma from the University of Heidelberg, in Germany—a more honourable source than that from which any clergyman in Massachusetts has received one—his brother and two nephews were kidnapped in New York, and without any trial, without any defence, were hurried off into bondage. Then, at Boston, you know what was done in the last four days. Behold the consequences of the doctrine that there is no higher law. Look at Boston to-day. There are no chains round your Court House—there are only ropes round it this time. A hundred and eighty-four United States soldiers are there. They are, I am told, mostly foreigners—the scum of the earth—none but such enter into armies as common soldiers, in a country like ours. I say it with pity — they are not to blame for having been born where they were and what they are. I pity the scum as well as I pity the mass of men. The soldiers are there, I say, and their trade is to kill. Why is this so?
You remember the meeting at Faneuil Hall, last Friday, when even the words of my friend, Wendell Phillips, the most eloquent words that get spoken in America in this century, hardly restrained the multitude from going, and by violence storming the Court House. What stirred them up ? It was the spirit of our fathers — the spirit of justice and liberty in your heart, and in' my heart, and in the heart of us all. Sometimes it gets the better of a man's prudence, especially on occasions like this ; and so excited was that assembly of four or five thousand men, that even the words of eloquent Wendell Phillips could hardly restrain them from going at once rashly to the Court House, and tearing it to the ground.
Boston is the most peaceful of cities. Why? Because we have commonly had a peace which was worth keeping. No city respects laws so much. Because the laws have been made by the people, for the people, and are laws which respect justice. Here is a law which the people will not keep. It is a law of our Southern masters; a law not fit to keep.
Why is Boston in this confusion to-day? The Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioner has just now been sowing the wind, that we may reap the whirlwind. The old Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioner stands back; he has gone to look after his " personal popularity." But, when Commissioner Curtis does not dare appear in this matter, another man comes forward, and for the first time seeks to kidnap his man also in the city of Boston. Judge Loring is a man whom I have respected and honoured. His. private life is mainly blameless, so far as I know. He has been, I think, uniformly beloved. His character has entitled him to the esteem of his fellow-citizens. I have known him somewhat. I never heard a mean word from him—many good words. He was once the law-partner of Horace Mann, and learned humanity of a great teacher. I have respected him a good deal. He is a respectable man—in the Boston sense of that word, and in a much higher sense; at least, I have thought so. He is a kind-hearted, charitable man; a good neighbour; a fast friend—when politics do not interfere; charitable with his purse; an excellent husband; a kind father; a good relative. And I should as soon have expected that venerable man who sits before me, born before your Revolution [Samuel May],—I should as soon have expected him to go and kidnap Robert Morris, or any of the other coloured men I see around me, as I should have expected Judge Loring to do this thing. But he has sown the wind, and we are reaping the whirlwind. I need not say what I now think of him. He is to act tomorrow, and may yet act like a man. Let us wait and see. Perhaps there is manhood in him yet. But, my Mends, all this confusion is his work. He knew he was stealing a man born with the same unalienable right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as himself. He knew the slave-holders had no more right to Anthony Burns than to his own daughter. He knew the consequences of stealing a man. He knew that there are men in Boston who have not yet conquered their prejudices—men who respect the higher law of God. He knew there would be a meeting at Faneuil Hall—gatherings in the streets. He knew there would be violence.
Edward Greeley Loring, Judge of Probate for the county of Suffolk, in the State of Massachusetts, Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioner of the United States, before these citizens of Boston, on Ascension Sunday, assembled to worship God, I charge you with the death of that man who was killed on last Friday night. He was your fellow-servant in kidnapping. He dies at your hand. You fired the shot which makes his wife a widow, his child an orphan. I charge you with the peril of twelve men, arrested for murder, and on trial for their lives. I charge you with filling the Court House with one hundred and eighty-four hired ruffians of the United States, and alarming not only this city for her liberties that are in peril, but stirring up the whole Commonwealth of Massachusetts with indignation, which no man knows how to stop—which no man can stop. You have done it all!
This is my Lesson for the Day. SERMON.[1]
"Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, and said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. And from that time he sought opportunity to betray him."—Matt. xxvi. 14-16.
"Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that."—Matt. xxvii 8, 4.
Within the last few days, we have seen some of the results of despotism in America, which might indeed easily astonish a stranger; but a citizen of Boston has no right to be surprised. The condition of this town from May 24th to June 2nd is the natural and unavoidable result of well-known causes, publicly and deliberately put in action. It is only the first-fruit of causes which in time will litter the ground with similar harvests, and with others even worse. Let us pretend no amazement that the seed sown has borne fruit after its kind. Let us see what warning or what guidance we can gather from these events, their cause and consequence. So this morning I ask your attention to a Sermon of the New Crime against Humanity committed in the midst of us, of the Last Kidnapping which has taken place in Boston.
I know well the responsibility of the place I occupy this morning. To-morrow's sun shall carry my words to all America. They will be read on both sides of the continent. They will cross the ocean. It may astonish the minds of men in Europe to hear of the iniquity committed in the midst of us. Let us be calm and cool, and look the thing fairly in the face.
Of course, you will understand, from my connection with what has taken place in part, that I must speak of some things with a good deal of reserve, and others pass by entirely. However, I have only too much to say. I have have had but short time for preparation, the deed is so recent. Perhaps I shall trespass a little on your patience this morning, that hand overrunning my customary hour some twenty or thirty minutes. If any of you find your patience exhausted, and standing too wearisome, you can retire; and, if without noise, none will be disturbed, and none offended.
On Wednesday night, the 24th of May, a young man, without property, without friends—I will continue to call his name Anthony Burns—was returning home from his usual lawful and peaceful work in the clothing shop of Deacon Pitts, in Brattle Street. He was assaulted by six ruffians, who charged him with having broken into a jeweller s shop. They seized him, forced him to the Court House, thrust him into an upper chamber therein, where he was surrounded by men, armed, it is said, with bludgeons and revolvers. There he was charged with being a fugitive slave. A man from Virginia, claiming to be his owner, and another man, likewise from Virginia, confronted the poor victim, and extorted from him a confession, as they allege, that he was the claimant's fugitive slave—if, indeed, the confession was not purely an invention of his foes, who had made the false charge of burglary; for they who begin with a lie are not to be trusted after that lie has been told. He was kept all night, guarded by ruffians hired for the purpose of kidnapping a man. No friend was permitted to see him; but his deadliest foes, who clutched at what every one of us holds tenfold dearer than life itself, were allowed access. They came and went freely, making their inquisition, extorting or inventing admissions to be used for Mr. Bums's ruin.
At nine o'clock the next morning, Thursday (May 25th), the earliest hour at which the courts of Massachusetts ever open, he was brought tot he court-room and arraigned before Edward Greeley Loring, Judge of Probate, one of the Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioners of the city of Boston, and immediately put on trial. "Intimidated" by the mob about him, and stupefied with terror and fear, he makes no defence. "As a lamb before his shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth." How could he dare make a defence, treated as he had been the night before?—confronted as he was by men clutching at his liberty?—in a court-room packed with rufiians, where the slaveholders' counsel brought pistols in their breasts? He had been in duress all night, with inquisitors about him. His claimant was there, with documents manufactured in Alexandria ; with a witness brought from Richmond; with two lawyers of Boston to aid them. What a scene it was for a Massachusetts court! A merchant from Richmond, so Mr. Brent called himself; another from Alexandria, who was a sheriff and member of the Virginia Legislature—for such Colonel Suttle has been—they were there to steal a man! They had him already in gaol; they went out and came in as they liked, and shut from his presence everybody who was not one of the minions hired to aid them in their crime.
Further, they had two lawyers of Boston giving them the benefit of their education and their knowledge of the law; and, in addition to that, the senior lawyer, Seth J. Thomas, brought considerable experience, acquired on similar occasions—for he has been the kidnappers' counsel from the beginning. The other lawyer was a young man of good culture and amiable deportment, I think with no previous stain on his reputation. This is his first offence. I trust it will be also his last—that he will not bring shame on his own and his mother's head. I know not how the kidnappers enticed the young man to do so base a deed ; nor what motive turned him to a course so foul as this. He is a young man, sorely penitent for this early treason against humanity. Generous emotions are commonly powerful in the bosoms of the young. A young man with only cruel calculation in his heart is a rare and loathsome spectacle. Let us hope better things of this lawyer; that a generous nature only sleeps in him. It is his first offence. I hope he will bring forth "fruits meet for repentance." Judge of him as charitably as you can. Of Mr. Thomas I have only this to add:—that he is chiefly known in the courts as the associate of Mr. Curtis in attempts like this; the regular attorney of the stealers of men, and apparently delighted with his work. He began this career by endeavouring to seize William and Ellen Craft. He is a member of the Democratic party who has not yet received his reward.
On the side of the kidnapper there were also the district marshal, the district attorney, the Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioner, and sixty-five men whom I counted as the marshal's "guard." When the company was ordered to disperse, and the guard to remain, I tarried late, and counted them. I reckoned sixty-five in the court-room, and five more outside. I may have been mistaken in the count.
On the other side there was a poor, friendless negro, sitting between two bullies, his wrists chained together by stout handcuffs of steel—a prisoner without a crime, chained; on trial for more than life, and yet there was no charge against him, save that his mother had been a slave!
Mr. Burns had no counsel. The kidnapper's lawyers presented their documents from Alexandria, claiming him as a slave of Colonel Suttle, who had escaped from "service." They brought a Virginia merchant to identify the prisoner. He was swiftly sworn, and testified with speed. The claimant's lawyers declared that Mr. Burns had acknowledged already that he was Colonel Suttle's slave, and willing to go back. So they demanded a "certificate;" and at first it seemed likely to be granted at once. Why should a Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioner delay? Why does he want evidence? Injustice is swift of foot. You know what was done in New York, the very same week:—three men were seized, carried before a commissioner, and, without even a mock trial, without any defence, hurried to bondage, pitiless and for ever! Only an accident, it seems, saved Boston from that outrage.
But there came forward in the conrt-room two young lawyers, Richard H. Dana and Charles M. Ellis, noble and honourable men, the pride of the mothers that bore them, and the joy of the fathers who have trained them up to piety and reverence for the law of God. Voluntarily, gratuitously, they offered their services as counsel for Mr. Burns. But it was said by the kidnappers that he did "not want counsel;" that he "would make no defence;" that he was "willing to go back," Messrs. Dana and Ellis did not wish to speak with him, or seemed to. plead that he might be their client. I spoke with him. His fear gave him a sad presentiment of his fate. He feared that he should be forced into slavery. How could he think otherwise? Arrested on a lying charge; kept in secret under severe and strict duress; guarded by armed men; confronted by his claimant; seeing no friends about him; how could he do otherwise than despair? If he went back at all, it was natural that he should "wish to go back easily," fearing that, if he resisted his claimant in Boston, he "must suffer for it in Alexandria." His "conqueror," he thought, would take "vengeance" on him when he got him home, if he resisted his claim. That is the best evidence which I have seen that the man had ever been a slave: he knew the taste and the strength of the slave-driver's whip. That was not brought forward in "evidence." If I had been the kidnapper's counsel I should have said, "The man is doubtless a slave; he is afraid to go back!" When I was in the court-room, as I was about to ask poor Burns if he would have counsel, one of the "guard" said to me, "You will never get him to say he wants a defence." Another more humanely said, "I hope he will; at any rate, it will do no harm to try." I asked him, and he said, "Do as you think best."
But still the counsel felt a delicacy in engaging under such circumstances. For they thought that, if, after all, he was to be sent- to bondage, and when in the hands of the slave-master should be tortured the more for the defence they had made for him in Boston Court House, it would surely be better to let the marshal take his victim as soon as he liked, and allow the Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioner to earn his "thirty pieces of silver" without delay. They begged for time, however, that the intimidated man might make up his mind, and determine whether he would have a defence or not.
There is no end to human atrocity. The kidnapper's lawyers objected to the delay, and wished the "trial" to proceed at once "forthwith." They said that the claimant, Colonel Suttle, was here, having come all the way from Alexandria to Boston, at great cost; that the ca^e was clear; that Burns made no defence: and they asked for an instant decision. The Democratic lawyer [Thomas] thought it was not worth while to delay; there was only the liberty of a man at stake—a poor man, with no reputation, no friends, nothing but the "natural, essential, and unalienable rights" wherewith he was "endowed by his Creator"—nothing but that:—let the Virginia colonel have his slave! That is Administration Democracy in Massachusetts. There are two Democracies—the Celestial and the Satanic. One—it is the Democracy of the Beatitudes of the New Testament and of Jesus Christ; that says, "My brother, you are as good as I: come up higher, and let me take you by the hand, and we will help each other." Such Democracy is the worship of the great God. The other—it says, "I am as good as you, and, if you don't let me triumph over you, I will smite you to the ground." That is the Democracy of Caleb Cushing, the Democracy of the Administration, and of a great many political men, Democrat and Whig, and neither Whig nor Democrat.
Commissioner Loring asked Mr. Burns if he wanted time to think of the matter, and counsel to aid in his defence. I shall never forget how he looked round that court-room, at the marshal, at the kidnapper's lawyers, at the commissioner, the claimant and his witness! Save the counsel, whom he had never seen before, there was scarce a friendly face that his eye rested on. At length he said timidly, and catching for breath, "Yes." Mr. Loring put off the case until Saturday. The Fugitive Slave Bill. Commissioner was to lecture at Cambridge on Friday. He is a Professor at Harvard College, and he could not conveniently hold court on that day. He is a Judge of Probate, and looks after widows and orphans; he must be in the Probate Office on Monday. Saturday was the most convenient day for the commissioner. So, in a matter which was to determine whether the prisoner should be a free man or only a thing which might be sold and beaten as a beast, the "court" allowed him forty-eight hours' delay! It really gave him time to breathe a little. Let us be grateful to the commissioner ! He gave more favour than any Fugitive Slave BiU Commissioners have done before, I believe.
You know the rest. He was on trial ten days. He was never in a court; all this time he has not seen a jury; he has not even seen a judge; the process is "summary," not "summary in time," as Mr. Loring declares; but it is "without due form of law." The Democratic chargé d'affaires at Turin says "the negro is the connecting link between the human and brute creation."[2] Why do you want a court to make a negro a slave in Boston? Surely, a commissioner is enough in such a case. Let him proceed as swiftly as he will:—the kidnapper's lawyers said—"forthwith;" not in a hurry, but "immediately."
You remember what followed. You have seen the streets crowded with armed men. You have read the newspapers, the handbills, and the posters. You remember the Faneuil Hall meeting, when all the influence of the platform scarce kept the multitude from tearing the Court House that night to the ground. You remember the attack on the Court House—a man killed and twelve citizens in gaol, charged with crimes of an atrocious character. You recollect the conventions—Free Soil and Anti-Slavery. You call to mind the aspect of Court Square last Monday. Boston never saw such an Anniversary week. There were meetings of theological societies, philanthropic societies, reformatory societies, literary societies: and Boston was in a state of siege—the Court House full of United States soldiers—marines from the navy yard, troops from the forts, from New York, from Portsmouth, from Rhode Island. The courts sat with muskets at their backs, or swords at their bosoms; drunken soldiers charged bayonet on the witnesses, on counsel, and on strangers, who had rights where the soldier had none. The scene last Friday you will never forget—business suspended, the shops shut, the streets blocked up, all the "citizen-soldiery" under arms. Ball cartridges were made for the city government on Thursday afternoon in Dock Square, to be fired into your bosoms and mine; United States soldiers loaded their pieces in Court Square, to be discharged into the crowd of Boston citizens whenever a drunken officer should give command; a six-pound cannon, furnished with forty rounds of canister shot, was planted in Court Square, manned by United States soldiers, foreigners before they enlisted. The town looked Austrian. And, at high change, over the spot where, on the 5th of March, 1770, fell the first victim in the Boston Massacre,—where the negro blood of Christopher Attucks stained the ground,—over that spot Boston authorities carried a citizen of Massachusetts to Alexandria as a slave; "and order reigns in Boston"—or Warsaw, call it which you will.
So much for a brief statement of facts.
Pause with me a moment, and look at the general causes of the fact. Here are two great forces in the nation* One is Slavery, Freedom is the other. The two are hostile, deadly foes—irreconcilable. They will go on fighting till one kills the other outright. From 1775 to 1788, Freedom generally prevailed over Slavery. It was the period of revolution, when the nation fell back on its religious feelings, and thence developed the great political ideas of America. But even then Slavery was in the midst of us. It came into the constitution, and, from the adoption of the Federal constitution to the present time, it has advanced, and freedom declined. It has gone over the Alleghanies, over the Rio del Norte, over the Cordilleras; it extends from the forty-ninth parallel to the thirty-second, from the Atlantic to the Pacific; it has gone into ten new States, into all the territories except Oregon.
Since the annexation of Texas, in 1845, Slavery has been the obvious master, Freedom the obvious servant. Fidelity to Slavery is the sine qua non for office-holders. Slavery is the "peculiar institution" of the industrial democracy of America. Slavery is terribly in earnest, as Freedom has never been since the Revolution. It controls all the politics of the country. It strangles all our " great men." There is not a great democrat, nor a great Whig, who dares openly oppose Slavery. All the commercial towns are on its side. There is not an anti-Slavery governor of any State in the Union. The supreme courts of the States are all pro-Slavery, save in Vermont. The leading newspapers are nearly all on the side of wrong—almost all the commercial, almost all the political newspapers. I know but few exception.—of course I do not speak of those devoted to philanthropy—the democratic Evening Post, truly democratic, of New York; and the New York Tribune; which is truly democratic, though it hoists another banner. Many of the theological journals—Protestant as well as Catholic—are cruelly devoted to Slavery. But proudly above all the religious journals of the land rises the Independent, and bears a noble witness to the humane spirit of Christianity. These are eminent exceptions, which would do honour to any nation.
The friends of Freedom appeal religiously to the souls and consciences of men: piety and justice demand that all be free; the appeal immediately touches a few. They address also the reason and the understanding of men: Freedom is the great idea of politics; it is self-evident that "all men are created equal." That argument touches a few more. But the religious, who reverence God's higher kw, and the intellectual, who see the great ideas of politics, they are few. Slavery addresses the vulgar interests of vulgar men. To the slave-holder it gives political power, Pecuniary power; and here is an argument which the dullest can understand, and the meanest appreciate. Able and cunning men feel this, and avail themselves of Slavery to secure money and political power. These are the objects of most intense desire in America. They are our highest things—marks of our "great men." Office is transient nobility; money is permanent, heritable nobility. Accordingly, Slavery is the leading idea of America—the "great American institution." I think history furnishes no instance of one section of a country submitting so meanly to another as we have done in America. The South is weak in numbers and in money—the North strong in both. The South has few schools, no commerce, few newspapers, no large mass of intelligent men, wherein the North abounds. But the most eminent Southern men are devoted to politics, while the Northern turn to trade: and so the South commands the North. I am only translating facts into ideas^ and bringing the condition or America to the consciousness of America. Some men knew these things before, but the mass of men know them not.
So much for the general causes.
Now look at some of the special causes. I shall limit myself chiefly to those which Massachusetts has had a share in putting into activity.
In 1826, on the 9th of March, Mr. Edward Everett made a speech in Congress. He was the representative of Middlesex County. Once he was a minister of the church where John Hancock used to worship, and as clergyman officially resided in the house which John Hancock gave to that church. Next, he was a Professor in Harvard College, where the Adamses—the three Adamses, Samuel, John, and John Quincy—were educated, and where John Hancock had graduated. He represented Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker HiU, and in his speech he said:—
"Neither am I one of those citizens of the North who would think it immoral and irreligious to join in putting down a servile insurrection at the South, t am no soldier, sir. My habits and education are very unmilitary; but there is no cause in which I would sooner buckle a knapsack to my back, and put a musket to my shoulder, than that." "Domestic slavery … is not, in my judgment, to be set down as an immoral or irreligious institution." "Its duties are presupposed by religion." "The New Testament says, ’Slaves, obey your masters.'"
The Daily Advertiser defended Mr. Everett, declaring that it was perfectly right in him to justify the continuance of the relation between the master and his slaves, and added (I am now quoting from the Daily Advertiser of March 28th, 1826):— "We hold that it is not time, and never will be, that we should be aroused to any efforts for their redemption." That was the answer which the "respectability of Boston" gave to Mr. Everett's speech. True, some journals protested against the iniquitous statement; even the Christian Register was indignant. But Middlesex County sent him again. Lexington, and Corcord, and Bunker Hill, returned their apostate representative a second, a third, a fourth, and a fifth time. And, when he was weary of that honour, the State of Massachusetts made him her Governor, and he carried to the State House the same proclivities to despotism which he had evinced in his maiden speech.
In 1835, the anti-Slavery men and women were mobbed in Boston by an assembly of "respectable gentlemen;" the Mayor did not stop the tumult, the destruction of property, and the peril to life! There were no soldiers in the streets then; nobody, I think, was punished.
The next winter, the General Assemblies of several Southern States sent resolutions to the Massachusetts General Court, whereof this is one from South Carolina:—"The formation of abolition societies, and the acts and doings of certain fanatics, calling themselves abolitionists, in the non-slaveholding States of this confederacy, are in direct violation of the obligations of the compact of the Union."
South Carolina requested the Government "promptly and effectually to suppress all those associations," and would consider " the abolition of Slavery in the district of Columbia as a violation of the rights of citizens, and a usurpation to be at once resisted." Georgia asked Massachusetts "to crush the traitorous designs of the abolitionists." Virginia required the non-slaveholding States "to adopt penal enactments, or such other measures as will effectually suppress all associations within their respective limits, purporting to be, or having the character of, abolition societies;" and that they "will make it highly penal to print, publish, or distribute newspapers, pamphlets, or other publications, calculated or having a tendency to incite the slaves of the Southern States to insurrection and revolt." How do you think Massachusetts answered? In solemn resolutions the committee of the Massachusetts Legislature declared that "the agitation of the question of domestic slavery had already interrupted the friendly relations between the several States of the Union; "expressed its "entire disapprobation of the doctrines and speeches of such as agitate the question," and advised them "to abstain from all such discussion as might tend to disturb and agitate the public mind." That was the voice of a committee appointed by the Massachusetts Legislature. True, it was not accepted by the House of Representatives, but the report was only too significant. What followed? In 1644, one of the most eminent lawyers of this State was sent by Massachusetts to the city of Charleston, to proceed legally and secure the release of Massachusetts coloured citizens from the gaols of Charleston, where they were held without charge of crime, and contrary to the Constitution of the United States. Mr. Hoar was mobbed out of Charleston by a body of respectable citizens, the high sheriff aiding driving him out Mr. Hoar made his report to the Gbvemor of Massachusetts, and said:—
"Has the Constitution of the United States the least practical validity or binding force in South Carolina, excepting when she thinks its operation favourable to her? She prohibits the trial of an action in the tribunals established under the Constitution for determining such cases, in which a citizen of Massachusetts complains that a citizen of South Carolina has done him an injury; saying that she has herself already tried that cause, and decided against the plaintiffs."
The evil complained of continues unabated to this day. South Carolina imprisons all the free coloured citizens of the North who visit her ports in our ships.
In 1845, Texas was admitted, and annexed as a slave State, with the promise that she might bring in four other slave States.
In 1847 and '48 came the Mexican War, with the annexation of an immense territory as slave soil. Many of the leading men of Massachusetts favoured the annexation of Texas. New England might have stopped it; Massachusetts might have stopped it; Boston might have stopped it. But Mr. Webster said "she could not be aroused." The politicians of Massachusetts favoured the Mexican war. It was a war for Slavery. Boston favoured it The newspapers came out in its defence. The Governor called out the soldiers, and they came. From the New England pulpit we heard but a thin and feeble voice against the war.
But there were men who doubted that wrong was right, and said, "Beware of this wickedness!" The sober people of the country disliked the war: they said, "No! let us have no such wicked work as this!" Governor Briggs, though before so deservedly popular, could never again get elected by the people. He had violated their conscience by issuing his proclamation calling for volunteers. In 1850 came the Fugitive Slave Bill. You all remember Mr. Webster's speech on the 7th of March. Before that time he had opposed all the great steps of the slave power— the Missouri Compromise, the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, the increase of slave territory. He had voted, I think, against the admission of every slave State. He was opposed to the extension of American Slavery, "at all times, now and for ever." He claimed the Wilmot proviso as his " thunder." He "could stand on the Buffalo platform" in 1848. But, in 1850, he proffered his support to the Fugitive Slave Bill, " with all its provisions, to the Aillest extent." He volunteered the promise that Massachusetts would "obey," and that "with alacrity." You remember his speech at the Revere House—discussion "must be suppressed, in Congress and out;" Massachusetts must "conquer her prejudices" in favour of the unalienable rights of man, which she had fought the Revolution to secure. You have not forgotten his speeches at Albany, at Syracuse, at Buffalo; nor his denial of the Higher Law of God at Capron Springs in Virginia—"The North Mountain is very high; the Blue Badge higher still; the Alleghanies higher than either; yet this ’Higher Law' ranges an eagle's flight above the highest peak of the Alleghanies." What was the answer from the crowd? "Laughter." The midtitude laughed at the Higher Law. There is no law above the North Mountain, above the Blue Ridge, above the peaks of the Alleghany—is there? The Fugitive Slave Bill reaches up where there is no God!
Men of property and standing all over New England supported the apostacy of Mr. Webster. You remember the letters from Maine, from New Hampshire, and the one from Newburyport. I am sure you have not forgotten the letter of the nine hundred and eighty-seven prominent men in and about Boston, telling him that he had " convinced the understanding and touched the conscience of a nation." Good men, whom I have long known, and tenderly loved, put their names to that letter. Did they think the "Union in danger?" Not one of them. A man of great understanding beguiled them. 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. The next Congress re-affirmed the Fugitive Slave Bill, "Twice they routed all their foes, And twice they slew the slain."
The new Representative from Boston, Mr. Appleton, gave the vote of Boston for it. He was never censured for that act. He was approved, and re-elected.
You remember the conduct of the Boston newspapers. Almost all of them went for the Fugitive Slave Bill. They made Atheism the first principle in American politics—"There is no Higher Law-" The instinct of commerce is adverse to the natural rights of labour: so the chief leaders in commerce wish to have the working man but poorly paid; the larger gain falls into their hands; their labourer is a mill, they must run him as cheap as they can. So the great cities of the North were hostile to the slave—hostile to freedom. The wealthy capitalists did not know that in denying the Higher Law or God they were destroying the rock on which alone their money could rest secure. The mass of men in cities, servants of the few, knew not that in chaining the black man they were also putting fetters on their own feet. Justice is the common interest of all men! Alas, that so few know what God writes in letters of fire on the world's high walls!
You have not forgotten the general tone of the pulpit,—"Conscience and the Constitution," at Andover. Mr. Stuart says, " Keep the laws of men, come what may come of the Higher Law of God." One minister of Boston said, "I would drive the fugitive from my own door." The most eminent Doctor of Divinity in the Unitarian ranks declared he would send his own mother into slavery. He says he said brother ! Give him the benefit of the ethical distinction: he would send back his own brother! "What had Andover and New Haven to say, in their collegiate churches? What the churches of commerce in New York. Boston, Philadelphia, Albany, Buffalo? They all went for kidnapping. "Down with God and up with iniquity." That was the short of the lower law religion which Uttered the land. The ecclesiastical teachers did more to strengthen infidelity then, than all the "infidels" that ever taught. What else could you expect from lower law divines? All at once this blessed Bible seemed to have become a treatise in favour of man-stealing. Kidnapping arguments were strewn all the way through from Genesis to Revelation. These were the reverned gentleman who call me "infidel," or "atheist!" Nothing has so weakened the Church in America as this conduct of these "leading ministers" at that time. I mean ministers of churches that are rich in money, which lead the fashion and the opinion of the day. What defences of kidnapping have I heard from clerical lips! "No matter what the law is—it must be executed. The men who made the Fugitive Slave Bill, and those who seek to execute it, are ’Christian men,' ’very conscientious!' "Turn back and read the newspapers of 1850 and 1851. Kay, read them not—they are too bad to read!
When the Fugitive Slave Bill was before Congress, some of the northern politicians said to the people, "Let it pass; it will ’save the Union,' and we will repeal it at the next session of Congress." After it had passed they said, "Do not try to repeal it; that would irritate the South, and 'dissolve the Union;' it will never be executed; it is too bad to be." But when the kidnapper came to Boston, and demanded William and Ellen Craft, the same advisers said, " Of course the niggers must be sent back; the law must be enforced because it is law!"
At length the time came to execute the Act. Morton was busy in New York, Kane in Philadelphia, Curtis, the Boston Commissioner, was also on his feet. William and Ellen Craft fled off from the stripes of America to the lion of England. Shadrach—he will be remembered as long as Daniel—sang his psalm of deliverance in Canada. Taking him out of the Kidnappers' Court was high treason. It was "levying war." Thomas Sims will not soon be forgotten in Boston. Mayor Bigelow, Commissioner Curtis, and Marshal Tukey, they will also be remembered; they will all three be borne down to posterity, riding on the scourged and bleeding shoulders of Thomas Sims. The government of Boston could do nothing for the fugitive but kidnap him. The officers of the county nothing; they were only cockade and vanity. The Supreme Court could do nothing; the Judges crouched, and crawled, and went under the chain. The Free Soil Governor could do nothing ; the Free Soil Legislature nothing. The Court House was in chains. Faneuil Hall was shut. The victim was on trial. A thousand able-bodied men sat in Tremont Temple all day in a Free Soil Convention, and—went home at night! Most of the newspapers in the city were for kidnapping. The greater part of the clergy were for returning the fugitive:—"Send back our brother." Some of the towns held meetings, and passed resolutions against the rendition of the fugitive—Lynn, New Bedford, Worcester. And, in consequence, the leading commercial papers of Boston threatened to cut off all trade with New Bedford; they would not buy its oil: would have no dealings with Lynn, they would not tread her shoes under their feet: they would starve out Worcester. In Boston, wealthy traders entertained the kidnappers from the South. Merchants and railroad directors withdrew their advertising from newspapers which opposed the stealing of men. More than one minister in New England was driven from his pulpit for declaring the Golden Rule superior to the Fugitive Slave Bill!
When Judge Woodbury decided not to grant the writ of habeas corpus, and thus at one spurt of his pen cut off Mr. Sims's last chance for liberty and life, the Court House rang with plaudits, and the clapping of hands of "gentlemen" who had assembled there! Fifteen hundred "gentlemen, of property and standing," volunteered to escort the poor fugitive out of the State, and convey him to bondage for ever. It was not necessary. When he stepped from Long Wharf on board John H. Pearson’s brig,—the owner is sorry for it now, and has repented, and promises to bring forth fruits meet for repentance; let that be remembered to his honour,—when Thomas Sims stepped on board the "Acorn," these were his words: "And this is Massachusetts liberty!" There was that great stone finger pointing from Bunker Hill towards heaven; and this was "Massachusetts liberty!" "Order reigned in Warsaw." But it was some comfort that he could not be sent away till soldiers were billeted in Faneuil Hall; then, only in the darkest hour of the night!
Boston sent back the first man she ever stole since the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Sims reached Savannah on the 19th of April, seventy-six years after the first battle of the Revolution, fought on the soil of Lexington. He was sent back on Saturday, and the next Sunday the "leading ministers" of this city—I call them leading, though they lead nobody—gave God thanks. They forgot Jesus. They took Iscariot for their exemplar. "The Fugitive Slave Bill must be kept," they said, "come what will come to justice, liberty, and love; come what may come of God."
I know there were noble ministers, noble men in pulpits, whose hearts bled in them, and who spoke brave warning words of liberty; some were in the country, some in town. I know one minister, an "orthodox man," who in five months helped ninety-and-five fugitives flee from American stripes to the freedom of Canada! I dare not yet tell his name! Humble churches in the country towns—Methodist, Baptist, Unitarian—of all denominations save that of commerce—dropped their two mites of money into the alms-box for the slave, and gave him their prayers and their preaching too. But the "famous churches" went for "law" and stealing men.
Slavery had long been master at "Washington: the "Union meeting "proved that it was master at Boston; proved it by words. The capture and sending back of Thomas Sims proved it by deeds. No prominent Whig openly opposed the Fugitive Slave Bill or its execution. No prominent democrat opposed it. Not a prominent clergyman in Boston spoke against it. I mean a clergyman of a "rich and fashionable church"—for in these days the wealth and social standing of the church make the minister "prominent." Intellectual power, eloquence, piety,—they do not make a "prominent minister" in these days.[3] Not ten of the rich men of Massachusetts gave the weight of their influence against it. Slavery is master; Massachusetts is one of the inferior counties of Virginia; Boston is only a suburb of Alexandria. Many of our lawyers, ministers, merchants, politicians, were negro-drivers for the South. They proved it by idea before; then by deed. Yet there were men in Boston who hated slavery—alas! they had little influence.
Let me not pass by the Baltimore conventions, and the two platforms. The Fugitive Slave Bill was the central and topmost plank in them both. Each confessed Slavery to be master; it seemed that there was no North; slave soil all the way from the south of Florida to the north of Maine. All over the land Slavery ruled.
You cannot forget Mr. Pierce's inaugural address, nor the comments of the Boston press thereon. He says the Fugitive Slave Bill is to be "unhesitatingly carried into effect;" "not with reluctance," but " cheerfully and willingly." The newspapers of Boston welcomed the sentiment; and now Mr. Pierce's organ, the Washington Unions says it is very proper this Bill should be enforced at Boston, for "Boston was among the first to approve of this emphatic declaration." So let the promise be executed here till we have enough of it!
You know the contempt which has been shown towards everybody; who opposed Slavery here in Massachusetts. Horace Mann—there is not a man in the State more hated than he by the "prominent politicians,"—or more loved by the people—because he opposed Slavery with all his might; and it is a great might. Robert Rantoul, though a politician and a party man, fought against Slavery; and when he died, though he was an' eminent lawyer, the members of the Suffolk bar, his brother lawyers, took no notice of him. They wore no crape for Robert Rantoul! He had opposed Slavery; let him die unnoticed, unhonoured, unknown. Massachusetts sent to the Senate a man whose chief constitutional impulse is the instinct of decorum—Mr. Everett, who had been ready to buckle on his knapsack, and shoulder his musket, to put down an insurrection of slaves; a Cambridge professor of Greek, he studied the original tongue of the Bible to learn that the Scripture says "slaves," where the English Bible says only "servants." Fit Senator!
Then came the Nebraska Bill. It was at once a measure and a principle. As a measure, it extends the old curse of Slavery over half a million square miles of virgin soil, and thus hinders the growth of the territory in population, riches, education, in moral, and religious character. It makes a South Carolina of what might else be a Connecticut, and establishes Paganism in the place of Christ's piety. As a principle, it is worse still—it makes Slavery national and inseparable from the national soil; for the principle which is covertly endorsed by the Nebraska Bill might establish Slavery in Massachusetts— and ere long the attempt will be made.
In the House of Representatives, forty-four Northern men voted for the enslavement of Nebraska. They are all Democrats—it is an administration measure. Mr. Everett, the senator from Boston, "did not know exactly what to do." The thing was discussed in committee, of which he was a member; but when it came up in public, it "took him by surprise." He wrote, I am told, to eleven prominent Whig gentlemen of Massachusetts, and asked their advice as to what he should do. With singular unanimity, every man of them said, "Oppose it with all your might!" But he did not. Nay, his vote has not been recorded against it yet. I am told his vote was in favour of prohibiting aliens from voting in that territory; his name against the main question has never been recorded yet. Nay, he did not dare to present the remonstrance which three thousand and fifty of his fellow-clergymen manfully sent to their clerical brother, and asked him to lay before the senate. Did any one suppose that he would dare do it? None who knew his antecedents.
There was an Anti-Nebraska meeting in Boston at Faneuil Hall. It was Siberian in its coldness—it was a meeting of icebergs. The platform was Arctic. There seemed to be no heart in the speeches. It must have been an encouragement to the men at Washington who advocated the bill. I suppose they understood it so. I am sure I should. The mass of the people in Massachusetts who think at all, are indignant; but so far as I can learn, the men who control the politics of Boston, or who have controlled them until the last week, feel no considerable interest in the matter. In New York, men of great property and high standing came together and protested against this iniquity. New York has been, for once, and in one particular, morally in advance of Boston. The platform there was not Arctic, not even Siberian. Such a meeting could not have been held here.
Now, put all these things together, and you see the causes which bore the fruits of last week;—in general, the triumph of Slavery over Freedom, and in special, the indifference of Massachusetts, and particularly of Boston, to the efforts which are made for Freedom; her zeal to promote Slavery and honour its defenders. Men talk of dividing the Union. I never proposed that. Before last week I should not have known where to begin. I should have had to draw the line somewhere north of Boston.
Last week Massachusetts got part of her pay for obeying the Fugitive Slave Bill with alacrity; for suppressing discussion; for conquering her prejudices; pay for putting cowardly, mean men, in the place of brave, honourable men; pay for allowing the laws of Massachusetts to be trodden underfoot, and her court-house of Northern granite to be surrounded by Southern chains. Thomas Sims was scourged on the 19th of April, when he was carried back to Savannah. Boston did not feel it then. She felt it last week—felt it sorely. In September, 1860, we heard the hundred guns fired on Boston Common, in honour of the Fugitive Slave Bill—fired by men of "eminent gravity." Last Friday you saw the cannon! One day you will see it again grown into many cannons. That one was only a devil's grace before a devil's meat! No higher law, is there? Wait a little longer, and you shall find there is a "lower law," a good deal lower than we have yet come to! Sow the wind, shall we? When the whirlwind comes up therefrom, it has a course of its own, and God only can control the law of such storms as those. We have not yet seen the full consequences of sowing atheism with a broad hand among the people of this continent. We have not yet seen the end. These are only the small early apples that first fall to the earth. There is a whole tree full of them. When some autumnal storm shakes the boughs, they will cover the ground—sour and bitter in our mouths, and then poison.
Yet this triumph of Slavery does not truly represent the wishes of the Northern people. Not a single Pro-Slavery measure has ever, been popular with the mass of men in New England or Massachusetts. The people disliked the annexation of Texas in that unjust manner: they thought the Mexican War was wicked. They were opposed to the extension of Slavery; they hated the Fugitive Slave Bill, and rejoiced at the rescue of Shadrach. The kidnapping of Thomas Sims roused a fierce indignation. Only one town in all New England has ever returned a fugitive—all the rest hide the outcasts, while Boston bewrays him that wandereth. The Nebraska Act is detested by the people.
A few editors have done a manly duty in opposing all these manifold iniquities. A few ministers have been faithful to the spirit of this Bible, and to their own conscience, heedless of law and constitution. Manly preachers of all denominations—save the commercial—protested against kidnapping, against enacting wickedness by statute. From humble pulpits their voices rang out in Boston and elsewhere. But what were they among so many? There were Theological Journals which stoutly resisted the wickedness of the prominent men, and rebuked the mammon-worship of the churches of commerce. The Independent at New York, the Congregationalist at Boston, not to mention humbler papers, did most manly service—now with eloquence, now with art, then with satiric scorn,—always with manly religion. Even in the cities, there were editors of secular prints who opposed the wicked law and its execution.
No man in New England, within the last few years, has supported Slavery without at the same time losing the confidence of the best portion of the people—sober, serious, religious men, who believe there is a law of God writ in the nature of things. Even Mr. Webster quailed before the conscience of the North: the Supreme Court of Massachusetts no longer enjoys the confidence of the people; the most "prominent clergymen" of New England—pastors, I mean, of the richest churches—are not looked up to with the same respect as before.
The popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin showed how deeply the feelings of the world were touched by this great outrage. No one of the encroachments of Slavery could have been sustained by a direct popular vote. I think seven out of every ten of all the New England men would have voted against the Fugitive Slave Bill; nine out of ten against kidnapping. But alas! we did not say so—we allowed wicked men to rule over us. Now behold the consequences! Men who will not love God must fear the devil. Boston is the test and touchstone of political principles and measures. Faneuil Hall is "the cradle of liberty," and therein have been rocked the great ideas of America—rocked by noble hands.
Well, if Boston had said, "No Texan annexation in that wicked way!" we might have had Texas on fair conditions. If Boston had opposed the Mexican War, all New England would have done the same—almost all the North. "We might have had all the soil we have got, without fighting a battle, or taking or losing a life, at far less cost; and have demoralized nobody. If, when the Fugitive Slave Bill was before Congress, Boston had spoken against that iniquity, all the people would have risen, and there would have been no Fugitive Slave Act. If, after that Bill was passed, she had said, "No kidnapping," there would have been none. Then there would have been no Nebraska Bill, no repeal of the Missouri Compromise, no attempt to seize Cuba and Saint Domingo. If the fifteen hundred gentlemen of "property and standing" in Boston, who volunteered to return Mr. Sims to bondage, or the nine hundred and eighty-seven who thanked Mr. Webster for the Fugitive Slave Bill, had come forward on the side of justice, they might have made every Commissioner swear solemnly that he would not execute that Act. Thus the "true sons of liberty," on the 17th of December, 1765, induced Commissioner Oliver to swear solemnly, at noon-day, in "presence of a great crowd," and in front of the Liberty Tree, that he would not issue a single stamp! Had that been done, there would have been no man arrested. There are only eight Commissioners, and public opinion would have kept them all down. We should have had no kidnappers here.
Boston did not do so ; Massachusetts did no such thing. She did just the opposite. In 1828, the Legislature of Georgia passed resolutions relative to the Tariff, declaring that the General Government had no right to protect domestic manufactures, and had been guilty of a "flagrant usurpation;" she will insist on her construction of the Constitution, and "will submit to no other." Georgia carried her point. The Tariff of 1828 went to the ground! South Carolina imprisons our coloured citizens: we bear it with a patient shrugs—and pay the cost: Massachusetts is non-resistant; "New England is a Quaker,—when a blustering little State undertakes to ride over us. Georgia offers a reward of five thousand dollars for the head of a non-resistant in Boston,—and Boston takes special pains to return Ellen Graft to a citizen of Georgia, who wished to sell her as a harlot for the brothels of New Orleans! Northern clergymen defended the character of her "owner"—a man of "unquestionable piety." You know what denunciations were uttered in this city against the men and women who sheltered her! Boston could not allow the poor woman to remain. Did the churches of commerce "put up a prayer" for her?" Send back my own mother! Not a Northern minister lost his pulpit or his professional respectability by that form of practical atheism. Not one! At the South not a minister dares preach against Slavery; at the North—think of the preaching of so many "eminent divines!"[4] My Mends, we deserve all we have suffered. We are the scorn and contempt of the South, They. are our masters, and treat us as slaves. It is ourselves who made the yoke. We offer our back to the slave-driver's whip. A Western man travels all through Kentucky—he was in Boston three days ago—and hears only this rumour: "the Yankees are cowards; they dare not resist us. We will drive them just where we like. We will force the Nebraska Bill down their throats, and then force Saint Domingo and Cuba after it." That is public opinion in Kentucky. My brothers, it is very well deserved.
The North hated the Missouri Compromise. Daniel Webster fought against it with all his manly might; and then it was very manly and very mighty. When he collects his speeches, in 1850, for electioneering purposes—a political pamphlet in six octavos—he leaves out all his speeches and writings against the Missouri Compromise! His friend, Mr. Everett, writes his memoir, and there is nothing about Mr. Webster's opposition to the extension of Slavery; about the Missouri Compromise not one single word. My friends, the South treat us as we deserve. They make compromises, and then break them. They say we are cowards. Are they mistaken P They put our seamen in gaol for no crime, but their complexion. We allow it. Then they come to New England, and in Boston steal our fellow-citizens—no! our fellow-subjects, our fellow-slaves. We call out the soldiers to help them I Go into a bear's den, and steal a young cub; and if you take only one, all the full-grown bears in the den will come after you and follow till you die, or they die, or their strength fails, and they must give up the pursuit.
"O Justice! thou art fled to brutish beasts.
And men have lost their reason!"
The Nebraska Bill has hardly got back to the Senate again when a Virginian comes here to see how much Boston will bear. He brings letters to "eminent citizens of Boston," lodges at the Revere House, and bravely shows himself to the public in the streets. He walks upon the Common, and looks at the eclipse—the eclipse of the sun I mean, not the eclipse of Boston: that he needs no glass to look at, as there is none smoked dark enough to hinder it from dazzling his eyes. He gets two Boston lawyers to help him kidnap a man. He finds a Commissioner, a Probate Officer of Massachusetts, ready to violate the tenure of his own trust, prepared for the work; a Marshal anxious to prove his democracy by stealing a man; he finds newspapers ready to sustain him; the Governor lets him go immolested; the Mayor lends him all the police of the city; and then, illegally and without any authority, against the protestations of the Aldermen, calls out all the soldiers among a hundred and sixty thousand people, in order to send one innocent negro into bondage, and gives them orders, it is said, to shoot down any citizen who shall attempt to pass their lines! The soldiers, half drunk, present their horse-pistols at the heads of women—their thumb on the hammer! They stab horses, and with their sabres slash the heads of men!
When Mr. Burns was first seized by the kidnappers, nearly all the daily newspapers took sides against the fugitive. The city was full of ministers all the week; two Anti^Slavery conventions were held, one of them two thousand men strong; the Worcester "Freedom Club" came down here to visit us: they all went home, and "order reigns in Warsaw." In South Carolina there is a public opinion stronger than the law. Let Massachusetts send an honoured citizen to Charleston, to remonstrate against an iniquitous statute, and most respectable citizens drive him awav. Coloured citizens of Massachusetts rot in the gaols of Charleston. Northern merchants pay the costs. Boston merchants remonstrated years ago, and the Boston senator did not dare to offer their paper in Congress! Yes, a Boston senator did not dare present the remonstrances of Boston merchants! The South despises us. Do you wonder at the treatment we receive? I wonder not at all.
Now, let me say another word—it must be a brief one—of this particular case. When Mr. Burns was kidnapped, a public meeting was called in Faneuil Hall. Who went there? Not one of the men who are accustomed to control public opinion in Boston. If ten of them had appeared on that platform, Mr. Phillips and myself would not have troubled the audience with our speech. We would have yielded the place—to citizens of "eminent gravity" giving their counsel, and there would have been no man carried out of Boston. I could mention ten men, known to every man here, who, if they had been there, would have so made such public opinion, that the Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioner never would have found "evidence" or "law" enough to send Anthony Burns back to Alexandria. There was not one of them there. They did not wish to be there. They cared nothing for freedom!
In general, the blame of this wickedness rests on the city of Boston, much of it on Massachusetts, on New England, and on all the North. But here I must single out some of the individuals who are personally responsible for this outrage.
I begin with the Commissioner. He was the prime mover.
Now, as a general thing, the Commissioners who kidnap men in America have had a proclivity to wickedness. It has been structural, constitutional. Man-stealing was in their bones. It was an osteological necessity. A phreno legist, examining their heads, would have said; "Beware of this man. He is ’fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils.'"
It seems natural that Mr. Kane should steal men in Philadelphia. His name is warrant to bear out the deed. In Boston, the former kidnapper lost no "personal popularity" by the act. His conduct seems alike befitting the disposition he was born with, and the culture he has attained to; and so appears equally natural and characteristic. But I thought Mr. Loring of a different disposition. His is a pleasant face to look at, dignified, kindly—a little weak, yet not without sweetness and a certain elevation. I have seen him sometimes in the Probate Office, and it seemed to me a face fit to watch over the widow and the fatherless. When a bad man does a wicked thing, it astonishes nobody. When one otherwise noble and generous is overtaken in a fault, we "weep to record, and blush to give it in," and in the spirit of meekness seek to restore such a one. But when a good man deliberately, voluntarily, does such a deed as this, words cannot express the fiery indignation which it ought to stir up in every man's bosom. It destroys confidence in humanity.
The wickedness began with the Commissioner. He issued the writ. It was to end with him,—he is sheriff, judge, jury. He is paid twice as much for condemning as for acquitting the innocent.
He was not obliged to be a Commissioner. He was not forced into that bad eminence. He went there voluntarily fifteen years ago, as United States Commissioner, to take affidavits and acknowledgments. Slave-catching was no part of his duty. The soldiers of Nicholas execute they master's tyranny, because they are forced into it. The only option with them is to snoot with a musket, or be scourged to death with the knout. If Mr. Loring did not like kidnapping, he need not have kept his office. But he liked it. He wrote three articles, "cold and cruel," in the Daily Advertiser, defending the Fugitive Slave Bill.
But if he kept the office he is not officially obliged to do the work. The District Attorney is not suspected of being so heavily fraught with conscience that he cannot trim his craft to sail with any political wind which offers to carry him to port; but even Mr, Hallett refused to kidnap Ellen Craft. He did not like the business. It was not a part of Mr. Loring's official obligation. A man lets himself to a sea-captain as a mariner to go a general voyage. He is not obliged to go privateering or pirating whenever the captain hoists the black flag. He can leave at the next port. A labourer lets himself to a farmer to do general farm work. By and by his employer says, "I intend to steal sheep." The man is not obliged by his contract to go and steal sheep because his employer will. That would be an illegal act, no doubt. But suppose the general government had made a law, authorizing every farmer to steal all the black sheep he can lay his hands on; nay, commanding the felony. Is this servant, who is hired to do general farm work, obliged in his official capacity to go and steal black sheep? 1 do not look at it so, I do not think any man does. A lawyer turns off many a client. A constable refuses many a civil job. He does not like the business. The Commissioner took this business because he liked to take it. I do not say he was not "conscientious." I know nothing of that. I only speak of the act. Herod was "conscientious," for aught I know, and Iscariot and Benedict Arnold, and Aaron Burr, I do not touch that question. To their own master they stand or fall. The tortures of the Spanish Inquisition may have been "conscientious."
It was entirely voluntary for Mr. Loring to take this case. There was no official obligation, no professional honour, that required him to do it. He had a "great precedent," even, in Mr. Hallett, to decline it.
In 1843, Massachusetts enacted a law prohibiting any State officer from acting as slave-catcher, for fear of abuse of our own law. Since that, Mr. Loring has become Judge of Probate. There was a chance for a good man to show his respect for the law of the State which gives him office.
Now see how the case was conducted. I am no lawyer, and shall not undertake to judge the technical subtleties of the case. But look at the chief things which require no technical skill to judge.
The Commissioner spoke very Idndly, and even paternally, when he consulted Burns. I confess the tear started to my eye when he looked so fatherly towarda the man, like a Judge of Probate, and asked him," "Would you like a little time to prepare to make a defence?" And when Mr. Burns replied, "Yes," he honourably gave him some time, forty-eight hours, to decide whether he would make a defence on Saturday, May 27. He also honourably gave Mr. Burns and his counsel a little time to make ready for trial. He gave them from Saturday until Monday! True it was only twenty-four hours; Sunday intervened, and lawyers, like other laymen, and ministers, are supposed to be at meeting on Sunday. That twenty-four hours—it was not very much time to allow for the defence of a man whose liberty was in peril!
If Mr. Burns had been arraigned for murder, he would have had several months to prepare for his trial, the purse and the arm of Massachusetts to summon witnesses for his defence. But as he was charged with no crime, only with being the involuntary slave of one of our Southern masters—as the Fugitive Slave Act was not designed to "establish justice," but its opposite, or to "insure the blessings of liberty," but the curse of bondage—he may have only twenty-four hours to make ready for his defence: his counsel and a minister may visit him—others are excluded! if Mr. Bums had been arraigned for stealing a horse, for slander, or anything else, not twenty-fours, or days, but twenty-four weeks would have been granted him to make ready for trial. A common lawsuit, for a thousand dollars, in the Supreme Court of Suffolk, is not ordinarily tried within a year; and, if any questions of law are to be settled, not disposed of within two years. Here, however, a man was on trial for more than life, and but twenty-four hours were granted him! I accept that thankfully, and tender Mr. Loring my gratitude for that! It is more than I looked for from any Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioner, except him. I never thought him capable of executing this wickedness. Honour him for this with due honour—no more; no less.
When the hearing began, the kidnapper's counsel urged that the testimony taken at first, when Mr. Burns was brought up, was in the case. The Commissioner held to this monstrous position ; and it was only after the urgent opposition of the prisoner's counsel that he consented it should be put in de novo. But after the kidnapping lawyers put in their evidence, the counsel for Mr. Burns asked time for conference and consultation, as the most important questions of law and fact came up; they were weary with long service and exhausting labour—and they begged the Commissioner to adjourn for an hour or two. It was already almost three o'clock. When hard pressed, he granted them thirty minutes to get up their law and their evidence, take refreshment, and come back to court. At length he extended it to forty minutes! Much of that time was lost to one of the counsel by the troops, who detained him at the door. But the next day, after Mr. Burns's counsel had brought in evidence to show that he was in Boston on the 1st of March,—which nobody expected, for Brent alleges that he saw him in Virginia on the 19th of March, and that he escaped thence on the 24th,—then, after a conference with the Marshal, he grants the kidnapper's lawyers an hour and a quarter to meet this new and unexpected evidence. Of course he knew that in granting them this, he really gave them all night to get up their evidence, prepare their defence, and come into court the next morning, and rebut what had. been said. Is that fair? Consider what a matter there was at stake—a man's liberty for ever and ever on earth! Consider that Mr. Loring was judge and jury;—that it was a "court" without appeal; that no other court could pass upon his verdict, and reverse it, if afterwards it was shown to be suspicious or proved to be wrong. He grants Mr. Burns thirty minutes, and the other side, at once, an hour and a quarter, virtually all night! That is not all. His decision was limited to one point, namely, the identity of the prisoner. If Mr. Burns answered the description of the fugitive given in the record, the Commissioner took it for granted, first, that he was a slave,—there was no proof; second, that he had escaped into another State—that was not charged in the record, nor proved by testimony; third, that he owed service and labour to Colonel Suttle, not to the lessee, who had a limited fee in his services, nor to the mortgagee, who had the conditional fee of his person; but to Colonel Suttle, the reversioner, the original claimant of his body.
Now the statute leaves the party claimant his choice between two processes; one under its sixth section, the other under the tenth.
The sixth section obliges the claimant to prove three points—1, That the persons claimed owes service; 2, That he has escaped; and, 3, That the party before the court is the identical one alleged to be a slave.
The tenth section makes the claimant's certificate conclusive as to the first two points, and only leaves the identity to be proved.
In this case, the claimant, by offering proof of service and escape, made his election to proceed under the sixth section.
Here he failed: failed to prove service; failed to prove escape. Then the Commissioner allowed him to swing round and take refuge in the tenth section, leaving identity only to be proved; and this he proved by the prisoner's confession, made under duress and in terror, if at all; wholly denied by him; and proved only by the testimony of a witness of whom we know nothing, but that he was contradicted by several witnesses as to the only point to which he affirmed capable of being tested.
So, then, the Commissioner reduced the question precisely to this : Is the prisoner at the bar the same Anthony Burns whom Brent saw in Virginia on the 19th day of March last, and who the claimant swears in his complaint escaped from Virginia on the 24th of March?
One man, calling himself "William Brent, a merchant of Richmond," testified as to the question of identity —"This is Bums." He was asked, "When did you see him in Virginia?" and he answered, "On the 19th of March last." But nobody in court new Mr. Brent, and Mr. Loring himself confessed that he stood "under circumstances that would bias the fairest mind." He had come all the way from Richmond to Boston to make out the case. Doubtless he expected his reward—perhaps in money, perhaps in honour; for it is an honour in Virginia to support the institutions of that State. But on the other side, many witnesses testified that Bums was here in Boston on the 1st of March, and worked several days at the Mattapan Iron Works, at South Boston. Several men, well known in Boston—persons of unimpeached integrity—testified to the fact. No evidence rebutted their testimony. Nothing was urged to impugn their veracity. The Commissioner says their "integrity is admitted," and "no imputation of bias could be attached" to them. So, to decide between these two, Mr. Loring takes the admissions of the fugitive, alleged to have been made under duress, in the presence of his " master," made in gaol; when he was surrounded by armed ruffians ; when he was " intimidated" by fear, — admissions which Mr. Burns denied to the last, even after the decision. This was the proof of identity!
The record called Burns a man with "dark complexion." The prisoner is a "full-blooded negro." His complexion is black almost as my coat. The record spoke of Burns as having a scar on his right hand. The right hand of this man had been broken; it was so badly injured that when it was opened he could only shut it by grasping it with his left. The bone stuck out prominent. The kidnapper's witness testified that Bums was in Virginia on the 19th of March. Several witnesses—I know not how many—testified that he was in Boston nineteen days before! Mr. Brent stated nothing to show that he had ever had any particular knowledge of Mr. Burns, or particularly observed his person. Some of the witnesses for the prisoner did not testify merely from general observation of his form or features, but they stated that they had noted especially the scar on his cheek, and his broken hand, and they knew him to be the man. Besides, this testimony is of multiplied force, not being that of so many to one fact; that of each stands by itself. There was a cloud of witnesses to prove that Mr. Bums was in Boston from the 1st of March. If their evidence could be invalidated, it was not attacked in court. Their fairness was admitted.
Not many years ago, a woman was on trial in Boston for the murder of her own child. At first she pleaded guilty, and, weeping, stated the motives which led to the unnatural crime. But the court interfered, induced her to retract the plea, and to make a defence. And in spite of her voluntary admissions made in court, she was acquitted—for there was not evidence to warrant a legal conviction.
Mr. Loring seemed to regard Slavery as a crimen exceptum; and when a man is charged with it he is presup posed to be guilty, and must be denied the usual means of defence. So out of the victim's own mouth he extorts the proof that this is the man named in the records.
A man not known to anvbody in court brings a paper from Alexandria claiming Anthony Sums as his slave; the paper was drawn up five hundred miles off; in the absence of Mr. Burns; by his enemies, who sought for his liberty and more than his life. He brought one witness to testify to the identity of the man, who says that, in his fear, Burns said, "I am the man." But seven witnesses, whose veracity was not impeached in the court, testify that the prisoner was in Boston in the early part of March; and therefore it appears that he is not Burns who was in Virginia on the 19th of March, and thence escaped on the 24th. To decide between the two testimonies—that of one Yirginian under circumstances that would bias the fairest mind, and seven Bostonians free from all bias—the Commissioner takes the words put into the mouth of Mr. Burns.
Now, the Fugitive Slave Bill provides that the testimony of the fugitive shall not be received as evidence in the case Mr. Loring avoids that difficulty. He does not call it "testimony" or "evidence." He calls it "admissions;" accepts it to prove the "identity," and decides the case against him. But who proves that Mr. Burns made the admissions? There are two witnesses: 1. A man hired to kidnap him, one of the Marshal's "guard," a spy, a hired informer, set to watch the prisoner and make inquisition. Of what value was his testimony? 2. Mr. Brent, who had come five hundred miles to assist in catching a runaway slave, and claimed Mr. Burns as the slave. This was the only valuable witness to prove the admission. So the admission ia proved by the admission of Mr. Brent, and the testimony of Mr. Brent is proved by the admission! Excellent Fugitive Slave Bill "evidence!" Brent confirms Brent! There is, I think, a well-known axiom of the conmion law, that "admissions shall go in entire"—all that the prisoner said. Now, Mr, Loring rules in just what serves the interest of the claimant, and rules out everything that serves Mr. Bums's interest. And is that Massachusetts justice?
Remember, too, that Commissioner Loring is the whole court—a "judge," not known to the Constitution; a "jury" only known in the inquisition! There is no appeal from his decision. The witness came from Virginia to swear away the freedom of a citizen of Massachusetts, charged with no crime. When the Marshal, and the men hired to kidnap, are about the poor black man, it is said he makes an admission that he is the fugitive; and on that "evidence" Mr. Loring decides that he is to go into bondage for ever. It was conduct worthy of the Inquisition of Spain![5] Let doubts weigh for the prisoner, is a rule as old as legal attempts at justice. Here, they weigh against him. The case is full of doubts—doubts on every side. He rides over them all. He takes the special words he wants, and therewith strikes down the prisoner's claim to liberty.
Suppose, in the present instance, the fugitive had been described as a man of light complexion, blue eyes, and golden hair: then, suppose some white man, you or I, answered the description, and some ruffian swore to the identity. By that form of law, any man, any woman, in the city of Boston, might have been taken and carried off into bondage straightway, irredeemable bondage, bondage for ever.
Commissioner Loring had no better ground for taking away the liberty of Anthony Burns than in the case I have just supposed.
Suppose Colonel Suttle had claimed the Mayor and Aldermen of Boston as his slaves; had brought a "record" from Alexandria reciting their names, and setting forth the fact of their owing service, and their escape from it; had them kidnapped and brought before Mr. Loring. According to his own ruling, the only question he has to determine is this: "the identity of the persons." A witness testifies that the Mayor and Aldermen of Boston are the parties named in the record as owing service and having escaped therefrom. The Commissioner says, "The facts to be proved by the claimant are three.
"1. That the parties charged owed him service in Virginia. "2. That they escaped from that service.
"These facts he has proved by the record which the statute (sec. 10) declares ’shall be held, and taken to be full and conclusive evidence of the fact of escape, and that the service or labour of the person escaping is due to the party in such record mentioned.'
"Thus these two facts are removed entirely and absolutely from my jurisdiction, and I am entirely and absolutely precluded from applying evidence to them; if, therefore, there is in the case evidence capable of such application, I cannot make it.
"3. The third fact is the identity of the parties before me with the parties mentioned in the record.
"This identity is the only question I have a right to consider. To this, and to this alone, I am to apply the evidence.
"And then, on the whole testimony, my mind is satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of the identity of the respondents with the parties named in the record.
"On the law and facts of the case, I consider the claimant entitled to the certificate from me which he claims."
The Mayor and Aldermen go into bondage for ever. The liberty of all this audience might be thus sworn away by a commissioner and another kidnapper.
But the "ruling" is not the worst thing in the case. The Commissioner had prejudged it all. He had prejudged it entirely before he had even begun this mock trial; before he heard the defence; before the prisoner had any counsel to make a defence. Here is my proof. On Friday (May 26), Wendell Phillips went to Cambridge to see Mr. Loring. He is a professor of law in Harvard College, teaching law and justice to the young men who go up thither to learn law and justice! Mr. Phillips went there to get permission to visit Mr. Burns, and see if he would make a defence and have counsel, Mr. Loring advised Mr. Phillips to make no defence. He said: "Mr. Phillips, I think the case is so clear that you would not be justified in placing any obstructions in the way of the man's going back, as he probably will."
So, as the matter was decided beforehand, it was to be only a mock trial, and might just as well have been dis pensed with. It keeps up some hollow semblanoe to the form of the Fugitive Slave Bill; but it was all prejudged before Mr, Burns had selected his counsel or determined to have any. Place no "obstructions in the way of the man's going back; as he probably will!"
Nor is that all. Before any defence had been made, on Saturday night, Mr. Loring drew up a bill of sale of Anthony Burns. Here it is, in his own handwriting:—
"Know all men in these Presents—That I, Charles F. Suttle, of Alexandria, in Virginia, in consideration of twelve hundred dollars, to me paid, do hereby release and discharge, quitclaim and convey to Antony Byrnes, his liberty; and I hereby manumit and release him from all claims land services to me for ever, hereby giving him his liberty to all intents and effects for ever.
"In testimony whereof, I have hereto set my hand and seal, this twenty-seventh day of May, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty-four."
What should you say of a Judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts who should undertake to negotiate a note of hand which was a matter of litigation before him in court? "What if the Chief-Justice, before he had heard a word of the case of the last man tried for murder—before the prisoner had any counsel—had told some humane man taking an interest in the matter, "You would not be justified in placing any obstructions in the way of the man's being hanged, as he probably will? "Add this, also: here Commissioner Loring is Justice to draw the writ. Judge, Jury, all in one! Do the annals of judicial tyranny show a clearer case of judgment without a hearing?
This is not yet the end of the wickedness. Last Wednesday night the Kidnapper's Court adjourned till. Friday morning at nine o'clock. Then the "decision" was to be made. But the kidnapper and his assistants, the Marshal, etc., knew it on Thursday night. How long before, I know not. The men who hired Mr. Loring to steal a man, with the Fugitive Slave Bill for his instrument, they knew the decision at least fourteen hours before it was announced in court—I think twenty hours before.
First, he judged the case before he heard it; second, he judged it against evidence when he heard it; third, he clandestinely commimicated the decision to one of the parties half a day before he declared it openly in court. Could Kane or Curtis do worse? I do not find that they have ever done so bad. Does Boston teem with Epsoms and Dudleys, the vermin of the law P Does New England spawn Jefeeyses and Scroggses, whom we supposed impossible—fictitious characters too bad to be?
Look at the Marshal's conduct. Of his previous character I say nothing. But his agents arrested Mr. Burns of a false charge; threatened violence if he should cry out; they kept him in secret. Nobody came nigh unto him.
The trial was unfairly conducted on the Marshal's part. The public was excluded from the Court House. His servants lined the stairways, insulting the people. Southerners were freely admitted, but Northern gentlemen kept out. Rude, coarse, and insolent fellows found no check. Clergymen and lawyers were turned back, and Southern students of law let in. Two gentlemen were refused admission; but when one declared he was from Virginia, the other from South Carolina, they were both admitted on the instant. The whole Court House seemed to be the property of the slave power.
He crowded the Court House with soldiers. Some of them were drunk, and charged bayonet upon the counsel and witnesses for Bums, and thrust them away. He employed base men for his guard. I never saw such a motley crew as this kidnapper's gang collected together, save in the darkest places of London and Paris, whither I went to see how low humanity might go down, and yet bear the semblance of man. He raked the kennels of Boston. He dispossessed the stews, bawding the courts with unwonted infamy. He gathered the spoils of brothels; prodigals not penitent, who upon harlots had wasted their substance in riotous living; pimps, gamblers, the mccubm of Slavery; men which the gorged gaols had cast out into the streets scarred with infamy; fighters, drunkards, public brawlers; convicts that had served out their time, waiting for a second conviction; men whom the subtlety of counsel, or the charity of the gallows, had left unhanged. "No eye hath seen such scarecrows." The youngest of the Police Judges found ten of his constituents there. Gaoler Andrews, it is said, recognised forty of his customers among them. It is said that Albert J. Tirrell was invited to move in that leprous gang, and declined![6] "The wicked walk on every side when the vilest men are exalted!" The publican who fed those locusts of Southern tyranny, said that out of the sixty-five, there was but one respectable man, and he kept aloof from all the rest. I have seen courts of Justice in England, Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland, and I have seen just such men. But they were always in the dock, not the servants of the Court. The Marshal was right; "the statute is so cruel and wicked that it should not be executed by good men." He chose fit tools for fitting work. I do not think Herod sent the guardian of orphans to massacre the innocents of Bethlehem. I doubt that Pontius Pilate employed a Judge of Probate to crucify Jesus between two thieves!
There was an unfairness about the offer to sell Mr. Burns. I do not know whose fault that was. His claimant pretended that he would sell; but when the money was tendered, his agents delayed, equivocated, wore out the time, till it was Sunday; and the deed could not legally be done. It was the man, and not the money they wanted. He offered to sell the man for twelve hundred dollars. The price was exorbitant, he would not bring eight hundred at Alexandria.[7] There was another trick. At one time it was thought the evidence would compel the reluctant Commissioner to free his victim. Then it was proposed that he should be seized in the court, and either summarily declared a slave by some other Commissioner, or else carried off with no further mock trial. I think it would have been done; but Commissioner Loring was ready to do the work demanded of him, and earn his twofold pay.
The conduct of the Governor requires some explanation. The law of Massachusetts was cloven down by the sword of the Marshal; no officer could be found to serve the writ of personal replevin, designed by the Massachusetts Legislature to meet exactly such cases, and bring Mr. Burns before a Massachusetts court. The Governor could not be induced to attend to it: Monday he was at the meeting of the Bible Society; Thursday at the meeting of the Sunday Schools. If the United States Marshal had invaded the sovereignty of South Carolina, where do you think her Governor would have been?
The conduct of the Mayor of Boston deserves to be remembered. He had the police of the city in Court Square, aiding the kidnapper. It was not their fault. They served against their will. Captain Hayes, of the police, that day magnanimously resigned his charge.[8] The Mayor called out the soldiers at great cost, to some one. He did this on his own responsibility. Five Aldermen have publicly protested against the breach of honour and justice. After the wicked deed was over, he attended a meeting of Sunday School children in Faneuil Hall. When he was introduced to the audience, "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings" came a hiss! At night, the "citizen soldiery" had a festival. The Mayor was at the supper, and toasted the military—eating and drinking and mddng merry. What did they care, or he, that an innocent citizen of Boston was sent into bondage for ever, and by their hands! The agony of Mr. Burns only flavoured their cup. So the butcher's dog can enjoy himself in the shambles, while the slaughter of the innocent goes on around him, "battening on garbage!"
Thus, on the 2nd of June, Boston sent into bondage the second victim. It ought to have been fifteen days later — the 17th of June. What a spectacle it was! The day was brilliant; there was not a cloud; all about Boston there was a ring of happy summer loveliness; the green beauty of June; the grass, the trees, the heaven, the light; and Boston itself was the theatre of incipient civil war!
What a day for Boston! Citizens applauding that a man was to be carried into bondage! Drunken soldiers, hardly able to stand in the street, sung their ribald song—"Oh, carry me back to old Virginia!"[9]
Daniel Webster lies buried at Marshfield but his dead hand put the chain on Anthony Burns. Last winter it was proposed to build him a monument. He needs it not. Hancock has none; Samuel Adams sleeps in a nameless grave; John Adams has not a stone. We are their monuments; the homage of the people is their epitaph. Daniel Webster also had his monument last Friday. It was the Court House crowded with two hundred and twenty United States soldiers and flanked with a cannon. His monument reached all the way from John Hancock's house in Court Street to the T Wharf; nay, it went far out to sea in the Revenue Cutter, and is borne seaward or shoreward. Conquer your prejudices! No higher law! On the brass cannon you could read, I still live.
Mr. Burns was seized on that day which the Christian church has consecrated to two of the martyrs. Saints Donatian and Bogatian. They seem to have been put to death by Rictius Varus, the Commissioner of Belgic and Celtic Gaul. They suffered death at Nantes. They were impeached for professing themselves Christians. Simple death was not torment enough for being a Christian in the year 287. They were put to the rack first. Their bodies, still held in great veneration, now sleep their dusty slumber in the great cathedral of the town. The antiquarian traveller wonders at the statues of those two martyrs still standing at the comer of the Money-Changers' Street, and telling the tale of times when the Christians only suffered persecution. St. Rogatian's day was not an unfitting time not Puritanic Boston to steal a man!
The day on which Mr. Burns was sent from Boston into Alexandrian bondage is still more marked in the Christian church. It is consecrated to a noble army of martyrs who tasted death at Vienna, in Gaul,—now Vienne, in the south of France—in the year 178 after Christ. I shall never forget the little town, once famous and eminent, where the dreadful event took place. A letter written, it is said, by St. Irenaeus himself details the saddening history. It begins, "We the Servants of Christ [Mr. Everett might translate it ' Slaves ', dwelling at Vienna and Lyons in Gaul to the brethren in Asia and Phrygia who have the same faith and hope with us. Peace, and Grace, and Glory from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ." The whole letter is a most touching memorial of the faithful piety of the Christians in days when it cost life to be religious. Anybody may read what remains of it in Eusebius. Here is the story in short:—
A law was passed forbidding Christians to be put of their own houses "in any place whatsoever."' The most cruel punishments were denounced against all persons who professed the Christian religion.
The Governor, who was also a commissioner appointed for persecuting and murdering the Christians, had the most prominent members of the Church arrested and brought before him. In the "examination" they were treated with such cruelty that Yettius Epagathus, a Christian of distinguished family, imdertook their defence, a man so exactly virtuous, that, though young, he won the honour of old Zacharias—"walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless." The commissioner asked him, "Art thou also a Christian?" Epagathus made his "admission" in a loud voice, and shared the fate of the martyrs. The Christians called him the Comforter of Christians,—"for he had the Comforter, the Spirit, in him, more than Zacharias himself;" a title as hateful then as Friend of the Slave now is in the Court or the Church of Kidnappers in Boston.
Sanctus, the Deacon; Maturus, a new convert; Attains, from Asia Minor, one of the pillars of the Church; Blandina, a female Slave ; Pothinus, ninety years old, and Bishop of Lyons, hard by, were put to the most cruel tortures. Four of them were exposed to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre to divert the spectators! Blandina was fastened to a post to be eaten up by the beasts, and when they left her untouched, the Marshal haled her to prison again. "But, last of all, St. Blandina, like a well-born mother who has nursed her children and sent them victorious to the King, hastened after them, rejoicing and leaping for joy at her departure ; thrown, indeed, to the wild beasts, she went as if invited to a bridal feast; and after the scourging, after the exposure to wild beasts, after the chair of fire, she was wrapped in a net and tossed by a bull—and at last killed." Others fell with them: Ponticus, a boy of fifteen; Alexander the Phrygian, and many more. They were tortured with cudgels, with whips, with wild beasts, and red-hot plates of iron; at last they died, one by one. The tormentors threw their dead bodies to the dogs: some raged and gnashed their teeth over the dead, seeking to take yet more abundant vengeance thereon; others laughed and made mockery thereof. And others, more gentle, seeming to sympathize as much as they dared, made grievous reproaches, and said, "Where is now their God, and of what profit is their piety, which they loved better even than their own life! Now we shall see if they will ever rise from the dead, and if their God can help and deliver them out of our hands!" So things went at Allobrogian Vienna on the 2nd of June, sixteen hundred and seventy-six years ago last Friday. The murder of those Christians was just as "legal" as the rendition of Anthony Burns. It would be curious to know what the "respectable" men of the town said thereupon: to see the list of fifteen hundred citizens volunteering their aid; to read the letter of nine hundred and eighty-seven men thanking the commissioner for touching their conscience. The preaching of the priests must have been edifying:—"I would drive a Christian away from my own door! I would murder my own mother!"
Doubtless some men said, "The statute which commands the torturous murder of men, women, and children, for no crime but piety, if constitutional, is wicked and cruel." And doubtless some heathen "Chief-Justice Parker" choked down the rising conscience of mankind, and answered, "Whether the statute is a harsh one or not, it is not for us to determine."[10] No! it is not for the bloodhound to ask whether the victim he rends to quivering fragments is a sinner or a saint; the bloodhound is to bite, and not consider; he has teeth, not conscience. The Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioner is not to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with his God; he is to kidnap men in Boston at ten dollars a head! The pagan murder of Christians at Vienna under Aurelian, did not differ much from the Christian kidnapping of Mr. Burns in Boston under Pierce. But, alas for these times—it is not recorded of the Romans that any heathen Judge of Probate came forward and volunteered to butcher the widows arid orphans of the early Church! Then the tormentor worshipped Mars and Bellona; now he sits in the Church of Jesus Christ. Boston chose a fit day to consummate her second kidnapping. St. Pothinus was a Christian preacher, so was Anthony Burns—"a minister of the Baptist denomination," "regularly ordained!" Commissioner Loring could not have done better than select this time to execute his "decision." On St. Pothinus's day, let Anthony Burns be led to a martyrdom more atrocious! The African churches of Boston may write a letter to-day, which three or four thousand years hence will sound as strange as now the Epistle of St. Irenaeus. Sixteen hundred and seventy-six years hence, it may be thought the Marshal's "guard" is a fair match for the bullies who tortured Blandina. In the next world the District Marshal may shake hands with the heathen murderer who put the boy Ponticus to cruel death. I make no doubt there were men at the corners of the streets who clapped hands, as one by one the lions in the public square rent the Christian maidens limb from limb, and strewed the ground with human flesh yet palpitating in its severed agony. Boston can furnish mates for them. But the Judge of Probate, the teacher of a Sunday-school, the member of a church of Christ,—he may wander through all Hades, peopled thick with Roman tormentors, nor never meet with a heathen guardian of orphans who can be his match. Let him pass by. Declamation can add nothing to his deed.
"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."
No doubt the commissioner for murdering the Christians at Vienna reasoned as "legally" and astutely in the second century as the Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioner at Boston in the nineteenth. Perhaps the "argument" was after this wise:—[11]
"This statute has been decided to be constitutional by the unanimous opinion of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the Province of Gaul, after the fullest argument and the maturest deliberation, to be the law of this province, as well as and because it is a constitutional law of the Roman Empire; and the wise words of our revered chief-justice[12] may well be repeated now, and remembered always. The chief-justice says:—
"'The torture, persecution, and murder of Christians was not created, established, or perpetuated by the consti tution; it existed before; it would have existed if the constitution had not been made. The framers of the constitution could not abrogate the custom of persecuting, torturing, and murdering Christians, or the rights claimed under it. They took it as they found it, and regulated it to a limited extent. The constitution, therefore, is not responsible for the origin or continuance of this custom of persecuting, torturing, and murdering Christians—the provision it contains was the best adjustment which could be made of conflicting rights and claims to persecute, torture, and murder, and was absolutely necessary to effect what may now be considered as the general pacification by which harmony and peace should take the place of violence and war. These were the circumstances, and this the spirit in which the constitution was made—the regulation of persecution, torture, and murder of Christians, so far as to prohibit provinces by law from harbouring fugitive Christians, was an essential element in its formation; and the union intended to be established by it was essentially necessary to the peace and happiaess and highest prosperity of all the provinces and towns. In this spirit, and with these views steadily in prospect, it seems to be the duty of all judges and magistrates to expound and apply these provisions in the constitution and laws of the Roman Empire, and in this spirit it behoves all persons bound to obey the laws of the Boman Empire to consider and regard them.'
"Therefore Christianos ad Leones—Let the Christians be torn to pieces by the wild beasts."
Wednesday, the 24th of May, the city was all calm and still. The poor black man was at work with one of his own nation, earning an honest livelihood. A Judge of Probate, Boston born and Boston bred, a man in easy circumstances, a professor in Havard College, was sitting in his office, and with a single spurt of his pen he dashes off the liberty of a man—a citizen of Massachusetts. He kidnaps a man endowed by his Creator with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He leaves the writ with the Marshal, and goes home to his family, caresses his children, and enjoys his cigar. The frivolous smoke curls round his frivolous head, and at length he lays him down to sleep, and, I suppose, such dreams as haunt such heads. But when he wakes next mom, all the winds of indignation, wrath, and honest scorn, are let loose. Before night, they are blowing all over this commonwealth—ay, before another night they have gone to the Mississippi, and wherever the lightning messenger can tell the tale. So have I read in an old mediaeval legend, that one summer afternoon there came up a "shape, all hot from Tartarus," from hell below, but garmented and garbed to represent a civil-suited man, masked with humanity. He walked quiet and decorous through Milan's stately streets, and scattered from his hand an invisible dust. It touched the walls ; it lay on the streets; it ascended to the cross on the minster's utmost top. It went down to the beggar's den. Peacefully he walked through the streets, vanished and went home. But the nezt morning, the pestilence was in Milan, and ere a week had sped half her population were in their graves; and half the other half, crying that hell was clutching at their hearts, fled from the reeking City of the Plague!
Why did the Commissioner do all this P He knew the consequences that must follow. He knew what Boston was. We have no monument to Hancock and Adams; but still we keep their graves; and Boston, the dear old mother that bore them, yet in her bosom hides the honoured bones of men whom armies could not terrify, nor England bribe. Their spirit only sleeps. Tread roughly, tread roughly on the spot—their spirit rises from the ground I He knew that here were men who never will be silent when wrong is done. He knew Massachusetts; he knew Boston; he knew that the Fugitive Slave Bill had only raked the ashes over fires which were burning still, and that a breath might scatter those ashes to the winds of heaven, and bid the slumbering embers flame. Had he determined already what should happen to Anthony Burns? He knew what had befallen Thomas Sims. Did he wish another inhabitant of Boston whipped to death?
I have studied the records of crime— it is a part of my ministry. I do not find that any college professor has ever been hanged for murder in all the Anglo-Saxon family of men, till Harvard College had that solitary shame* Is not that enough? Now she is the first to have a professor that kidnaps men. "The Athens of America" famished both.
I can understand how a man commits a crime of passion, or covetousness, or rage,—nay, of revenge, or of ambition. But for a man in Boston, with no passion, no covetousness, no rage, with no ambition nor revenge, to steal a poor negro, to send him into bondage,—I cannot comprehend the &ct. I can understand the consciousness of a lion, not a kidnapper's heart. Once Mr. Loring defined a lawyer to be "a human agent for effecting a human purpose by human means." Here, and now, the Commissioner seems an inhuman agent for effecting an inhuman purpose by inhuman means.
I belong to a school that reverences the infinite perfection of God,—if, indeed, there be such a school. I believe, also, in the nobleness of man; but last week my faith was somewhat sorely tried. As I looked at that miscreant crew, the kidnapper's bodyguard, and read in their feces the record and the prophecy of many a crime,
"Felons by the hand of nature marked,
Quoted and signed to do a deed of shame,"
I could explain and not despair. They were tools, not agents. But as I looked into the Commissioner's face, mild and amiable, a face I have respected, not without seeming cause ; as I remembered his breeding and his culture, his social position, his membership of a Christian church, and then thought of the crime he was committing against humanity, with no temptation, I asked myself, can this be true? Is man thus noble, made in the dear image of the father God? Is my philosophy a dream : or are these facts lie?
But there is another court. The Empsons and the Dudleys have been summoned there before; Jeffreys and Scroggs, the Kanes, and the Curtises, and the Lorings, must one day travel the same imwelcome road. Imagine the scene after man's mythologic way. "Edward, where is thy brother Anthony?" "I know not; am I my brother's keeper. Lord?" "Edward, where is thy brother Anthony?" "Oh, Lord, he was friendless, and so I smote him; he was poor, and I starved him of more than life. He owned nothing but his African body. I took that away from him, and gave it to another man!" Then listen to the voice of the Crucified—"Did I not tell thee, when on earth, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy understanding and thy heart?'" " But I thought thy kingdom was not of this world."
"Did I not tell thee that thou shouldst love thy neighbour as thyself? Where is Anthony, thy brother? I was a stranger, and you sought my life; naked, and you rent away my skin; in prison, and you delivered me to the tormentors—fate far worse than death. Inasmuch as you did it to Anthony Burns, you did it unto me."
The liberty of America was never in greater peril than now. Hessian bayonets were not half so dangerous as the gold of the National treasury in the hands of this Administration. Which shall conquer. Slavery or Freedom? That is the question. The two cannot long exist side by side. Think of the peril; remember the rapacity of this Administration; its reckless leaders: think of Douglas, Gushing, and the rest. They aimed at the enslavement of Nebraska. The Northern majority in Congress yielded that.
Now they aim at Hayti and Cuba. Shall they carry that point? Surely, unless we do our duty. Shall Slavery be established at the North, at the West, and the East; in all the free States? Mr. Toombs told Mr. Hale—" Before long the master will sit down at the foot of Bunker Hill Monument with his slaves." Will do it. He has done it already, and not an officer in the State of Massachusetts made the least resistance. Our laws were trod down by insolent officials, and Boston ordered out her soldiers to help the disgraceful deed. Strange that we should be asked to make the fetters which are to chain us. Mr. Suttle is only a feeler. Soon there will be other Suttles in Boston. Let them come!
It is not only wicked; it is costly. The kidnapping of Mr. Bums must have cost in all at least one hundred thousand dollars, including the loss of time and travelling expenses of our friends from the country. The publican's bill for feeding the Marshal's crew is already more than six thousand dollars! Consider the demoralization of the people produced by such a deed. Mr. Dana was knocked down in the street by one of the Marshal's posse—as it is abundantly proved.[13] The blow might easily have been fatal. It is long since a bully has attacked a respectable citizen in Boston before. Hereafter I fear it will be more common. You cannot employ such a body-guard as the Marshal had about him in such business without greatly endangering the safety of the persons and the property of the town. "We shall hear from them again. What a spectacle it was; the army of the United States, the soldiers of Boston, sending an innocent man into Slavery! What a lesson to the children in the Sunday Schools—to the vagrant children in the streets, who have no school but the Sights of the City! What a lesson of civilization to the Irish population of Boston! Men begin to understand this. There never was so much Anti-Slavery feeling in Boston before—never so much indignation in my day. If a law aims at justice, though it fail of the mark we will respect the law-not openly resist it or with violence: was a little, and amend it or repeal it. But when the law aims at injustice, open, manifest, palpable wickedness, why, we must be cowards and fools too, if we submit.
Massachusetts has never felt so humiliated before. Soldiers of the Government enforcing a law in peaceful Boston, the most orderly of Christian cities! We have had no such thing since the Declaration of Independence! The rendition of Mr. Burns fills New England with sorrow and bitter indignation. The people tolled the bells at Plymouth. The bones of the forefathers gave that response to the kidnappers in Boston. At Manchester and several other towns they did the same. To-day, ministers are preaching as never before. What will it all come to? Men came to Boston peacefully last week. Will they always come "with only the arms God gave?" One day in the seventeenth century five thousand country gentlemen rode into London with a "petition to the King"—with only the arms God gave them. Not long after they went thither with Oliver Cromwell at their head and other "arms" which God also had given. May such times never return in New England![14]
We want no rashness, but calm, considerate action, deliberate, prudent far-seeing. The Fugitive Slave Bill is a long wedge, thin at one end, wide at the other; it is entered between the bottom planks of our Ship op State; a few blows thereon will "enforce" more than the South thinks of. A little more,—and we shall go to pieces. Men talk wildly just now, and I do not credit what cool men say in this heat. But I see what may come— what must come, if a few more blows be struck in that quarter. It was only Mr. Webster's power to manufacture public opinion by his giant will and immense eloquence, which made the North submit at all to the Fugitive Slave Bill. He strained his power to the utmost—and died! Now there is no Webster or Clay; not even a Calhoun; not a first-rate man in the Pro-Slavery party. North or South. Slavery is not well manned—many hands, dirty, cunning, stealthy,—not a single great, able head.
The cowardice of Mr. Everett has excited the clergy of New England; of all the North. They are stung with the reproach of the people, and ashamed of their own past neglect. The Nebraska Bill opens men's eyes. Agitation was never so violent aa at this day. The prospect of a war with Spain is not inviting to men who own ships, and want a clear sea and open market. Pirates, privateers,— Algerine, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, West Indian,—are not welcome to the thoughts of men. The restoration of the Slave Trade is not quite agreeable to the farmers and mechanics of the North. This attempt to seize a man in Boston; the display of force; the insolence of the officials; the character of the men concerned in this iniquity—all is offensive. Then there was insult, open and intentional. Mr. Burns was carried through State Street at "high change." Boston merchants feel as they never did before. All Massachusetts is incensed. The wrath of Massachusetts is slow, but she has wrath, has courage, "perseverance of the saints."
Let us do nothing rashly. What is done hastily must be done over again—it is not well done. This is what I would recommend.
1, A convention of all Massachusetts, without distinction of party, to take measures to preserve the rights of Massachusetts. For this we want some new and stringent laws for the defence of personal liberty, for punishing all who invade it on our soil. We want powerful men as officers to execute these laws.
2. A general convention of all the States to organize for mutual protection against this new master.
It is not speeches that we want—but action; not rash, crazy action, but calm, deliberate, systematic action—organization for the defence of personal liberty and the State Eights of the North. Now is a good time; let us act with cool energy. By all means let us do something, else the liberties of America go to ruin—then what curses shall mankind heap upon us!
"And deep, and more deep—as the iron is driven,—
Base slaves, will the whet of our agony be,
When we think—as the damned haply think of the Heaven
They had once in their reach—that we might have been free,"
But, my friends, out of all this dreadful evil we can bring relief. The remedy is in our hearts and hands. God works no miracles. There is power in human nature to end this wickedness. God appointed the purpose, provided the means—a divine purpose, human means. Only be faithful, and in due time we shall triumph over the destroyer. Every noble quality of man works with us; each attribute of God. We are His instruments. Let us faithfully do the appointed work! Darkness is about us! Journey forward; light is before us!
"O God, who in thy dear still heaven
Dost sit and wait to see
The errors, sufferings, and crimes
Of our humanity;
How deep must be thy Causal love,
How Whole thy final care,
Since Thou who rulest all above
Canst see, and yet canst bear!"[15]
- ↑ The Sermon which follows was printed in the Boston Commonwealth, on Monday, from the Phonographic Report of Messrs. Slack and Yerrinton. They copied out the notes at my house, and I revised them. We did not complete our labours till half-past three o'clock Monday mornings. It may easily be imagined that some errors appeared in the print—for the perishable body weigheth down the mind, and, though the spirit be willing, the flesh is too weak to work four-and-twenty hours continuously. Yet the errors were surprisingly few. In this edition of the Sermon some passages have been added which were omitted in the Report, and some also which, though written, were not delivered on Sunday.
Boston, June 10, 1854. - ↑ See above, vol. i. p. 394.
- ↑ Dr. Charles Lowell, with the humane piety which has beautified his long and faithful ministry, at that time opposed the Fugitive Slave Bill with manly earnestness.
- ↑ My friend, the Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher, thinks I have been unjust to the ministers,—judging from the Sermon as reported m the Commonwealth. So he published the following article in that paper on Friday, June 9. I gladly insert it below. It comes from a powerful and noble man. I wish he had made out a stronger case against me.
"Theodore Parker and the Ministry.
"Mr. Editor—In his Sermon, last Sabbath, Mr. Parker seems to charge the clergy of the country with a general, if not universal, delinquency in the cause of freedom with respect to the Fugitive Slave Law. He says, 'You all remember the tone of the pulpit.’ As if on that subject the pulpit had been a unit. He adds, ’What had Andover and New Haven to say in their collegiate churches? What the churches (of commerce) of New York, of Boston, of Philadelphia, of Albany, of Buffalo? They all went for kidnapping. "Down with God and up with kidnapping." That was the short of the lower law religion that littered the land. The ecclesiastical teachers did more to strengthen infidelity than all the infidels that ever taught.' He does not say that these charges are true of a part only of the ministry. His language would convey to any reader, ignorant of the fact, the opposite impression. He says that when Thomas Sims was sent back, "the clergy were for returning the Fugitive. "Send back our brother." ’The next Sunday the leading ministers of the city—I call them leading, though they lead nobody—gave God thanks.'
"Speaking of the Slave Bill and its execution, he says, ’Not a prominent clergyman spoke against it.'
"And when he speaks of the Nebraska Bill, he scarcely mentions the petition of the three thousand and fifty ministers. And then, not as if he desired to give them due praise, he merely mentions it incidentally in dealing with Mr. Everett—He did not dare to present the remonstrance which three thousand and fifty of his fellow-clergyman sent to their clerical brother, and asked him to lay before the Senate.' And again: ’The cowardice of Mr. Everett has excited the clergy of New England—of all the North; they are stnng with the reproach of the people, and ashamed of their past neglect.' Just as if they had not been self-moved by their own honourable impulses. The bearing of all these passages, considered in the general drift of the Sermon, is undeniably to implicate the clergy as a whole in the delinquencies charged.
"Now, if Mr. Parker were to be represented, on both continents, as an advocate of kidnapping, and of the Fugitive Slave Law, he would probably regard it as unjust. But he does not seem to be sufficiently alive to the idea, that it is unjust to convey the idea that this is true of clergymen who have from the first opposed these measures as earnestly and decidedly as he himself. He seems to be fully convinced that to rob even one slave of his liberty is a crime. He does not seem as deeply to feel that it is a crime to rob even our ministers of that reputation which in his own case he prizes so highly. Even if the cases of fidelity were few, for that very reason they would receive from a lover of the cause the more careful and particular notice aifd praise. In cases like these, if ever, discriminations and truthful statements of &cts are a sacred duty. Let those be censured who deserve censure, and let those be commended who deserve praise.
"Allow me, then, to state some of the facts of the case chiefly concerning the Orthodox Congregational pastors and churches, leaving to other denominations, if they see fit, to state similar facts, more at large, in their own case. From my own knowledge, I am assured that it would not be difficult to multiply ihem, especially if a frill account were to be given of all the unpublished sermons of the times.
"It is not true, as Mr. P.'s statements imply, that Mr. Parker was the only one who preached and wrote and prayed against the Fugitive Slave Law.
"The Congregationalist, then edited by the Rev. H. M. Dexter, Rev. Mr. Storrs, and myself, devoted all its energies to a conflict with the Fugitive Slave Bill, and a vindication of the claim of the higher law. Some of its articles were considered 'of such importance as to be honoured with special attention and censure by Mr. Choate, at the Boston Union Saving meeting. Our articles, if collected, would make a large volume.
"The law was also most earnestly opposed from the pulpit by many ministers, Mr. Stone, Mr. Dexter, and myself among the number. The same thing was true of a large number of the clergymen of New England and the Middle States. I have before me published Sermons or other Addresses to this effect from Storrs and Spear, of Brooklyn, N. Y.; Beecher, of Newark, N. J.; Thompson and Cheever, of New York; Bacon, of New Haven, Conn.; Colver, of Boston; Wallcott, now of Providence; Leavit, then of Newton, Mass. ; Withhigton, of Newbury, Mass.; Whitcomb, of Stoneham, Mass.; Thayer, of Ashland, Mass.; Arvine, of West Boylston, Mass., and others. Nothing can be more able and eloquent than their defence of God's law, as opposed to the infamous Slave Bill. Others also were published which I have not on file, and I know of several very able discourses against the law which were not published. If a true report could be made of all the Sermons then preached, and of the influence then exerted in other ways by the ministry of the North, there is reason to believe that a very large majority would be found to have set themselves decidedly against the law, and to have advocated its entire disobedience.
"The fact is, that undue importance has been given to those of the ministry who favoured obedience to that law, and they have been made to overshadow its more numerous opponents.
"In relation to Andover, the facts are these:—Professor Stuart, who for some years had ceased to act as Professor in the Seminary, published his views, greatly to the regret of a large portion of his brethren. That the body of the Professors of the Institution did not sympathize in these views, is evident from the fact that when a paper approving the compromise was circulated there, Professors Park, Phelps, and Edwards refused to sign. Only one acting Professor did sign, much to his own subsequent regret. This does not justify the sweeping affirmation.
"'Andover went for kidnapping.' Mr. Parker ought to be more careful, and less free in the use of such wholesale charges. Moreover, the positions of Professor Stuart were thoroughly exposed by members of his own denomination.
"The Rev. Rufus Clark, now of East Boston, published in the columns of the Atlas a thorough refutation of his pamphlet in a series of very able articles, which were subsequently republished in a pamphlet form.
"Rev. George Perkins, of Connecticut, performed a similar service in that State. Rev. Mr. Dexter, of Boston, exposed himself to an excited retort from Professor Stuart, for his keen and able exposure of his course on the Compromises.
"That there was a sad failure on the part of too many of the clergy of Boston and other commercial cities, cannot be denied; nor do I desire to avert from them merited censure. But ought the labours of such men as the clerical editors and contributors of the independent to be passed by in silence in speaking of the prominent clergy of the city of New York?
"As to the other cities named, if there were but one exception in each, it ought to have been prominently named and honoured. I do not doubt that there were more.
"As to the country churches and pastors of New England, I have already stated my opinion that the vast majority were opposed to the Fugitive Slave Law. It is not just to regard the Nebraska protest as a virtual confession and reparation of past neglect, but rather as a development of the real feeling of the clergy of New England. Charity thinketh no evil, and there is no gain at this time in depreciating the merits of any earnest opponents of the aggressions of Slavery.
"As Mr. Parker expects to be read in all parts of this nation and on both sides of the Atlantic, I will not doubt that his strongly avowed appreciation of what is just and honourable in action will induce him to revise and correct his statement of facts, and instead of such sweeping and indiscriminate censure, to give honour where honour is due."Edward Beecher."
I have repeatedly and in the most public manner done honour to the ministers who have opposed this great iniquity, and did not suppose that any one would misunderstand the expressions which Dr. Beecher considers as "sweeping." When he reads in the Bible that "Jerusalem and all Judea went out," I suppose he thinks that some persons stayed at home. But I am sorry he could not make out a stronger case for his side. I know nothing of what was said privately, or of sermons which never get spoken of out of the little parish where they are written. He mentions sixteen Orthodox ministers who published matter in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Bill. It is not a very large number for all the churches in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts to furnish. I can mention more.
These are the facts in respect to Andover: Professor Stuart, the most distinguished clergyman in all New England, wrote an elaborate defence of the Fugitive Slave Bill, and of Mr. Webster's conduct in defending it. He was induced to do this by Mr. Webster himself. The work is well known—Conscience and the Constitution—and it is weak and doting as it is wicked. Professor Stuart and two other Andover Professors—Rev. Ralph Emerson, D.D., and Rev. Leonard Woods, D.D.—signed the letter to Mr. Webster expressing their "deep obligations for what this speech has done and is doing; "thanking him" for recalling us to our duties under the Constitution, and for the broad, national, and patriotic views" it inculcates, and desiring to "express to you our entire concurrence in the sentiments of your speech." It seems three other Professors—Messrs. Park, Phelps, and Edwards—did not sign it, and one of the signers—Dr. Woods or Dr. Emerson—did it much to his own subsequent regret. But did he make his regret public? Did Andover in public say anything against the conduct of the signers?
At the Annual Conference of Unitarian Ministers, in May, 1851, long and public defences of kidnapping were made by "the most eminent men in the denomination." One Doctor of Divinity vindicated the attempt of his parishioners to kidnap mine, whom I took to my house for shelter. Dr. Dewey's promise to send back his own mother or brother got the heartiest commendation from more than one "prominent minister." Dr. Dewey was compared with "faithful Abraham;" his declaration was "imputed to him for righteousness." Many of the country ministers were of a different opinion. Some of them declared his conduct "atrocious." Of course there were noble men in the Unitarian denomination, who were faithful to the great principles of Christianity. I have often spoken in their praise, and need not now mention their names; too well known to require honour from me.
But I am sorry to say that I can retract nothing from what I have said in general respecting the conduct of the clergy of all denominations at that time. At a large public meeting in Boston a Vigilance Committee was appointed to look after the fugitives and furnish them aid. The Committee sent a circular to every church in Massachusetts, asking for the fugitives donations of money and clothes; and received replies from eighty-seven churches, which gave us $148,456!
Here is my letter in reply to Dr. Beecher, from the Commonwealth of June 10, 1854:—
Dr. Edward Beecher and Theodore Parker.
Rev. Edward Beecher, D.D.,—My dear Sir, I have just read your letter in the Commomwealth of this morning, in which yon maintain that the statements in my last sermon respecting the delinquency of the Northern clergy were too sweeping, and that I did injustice to the ministers who stoutly resisted the Fugitive Slave Bill and its execution. Perhaps the language of the sermon would seem to warrant your opinion. But I have so many times, and in so public a manner, expressed my respect and veneration for those noble men who have been found truthful in times of peril, that I cannot think I am in general obnoxious to the charge you make against me.
In respect to the special sermon of last Sunday, I beg leave to inform you that the whole was neither printed nor preached; the entire sermon is now in press, and when you see it, I think you will find that I do no injustice to the men you speak of. As I spoke on Sunday, I did not suppose any one would misunderstand my words, or think I wished to be regarded as the only one found faithful. Certainly I have many times done honour to the gentlemen you mention, and to the journals you refer to — ^with others you do not name. And allow me to say, the conduct of yourself and all your family has not only been a strong personal encouragement to me, but a theme of public congratulation which I have often brought' forward in lectures, and sermons, and speeches. I am a little surprised that you should suppose that by the churches of commerce in New York, Boston, &c., I mean all the churches of these towns. I still think that from 1850 to 1852 the general voice of the New England churches, so far as it was heard through the press, was in favour of the Fugitive Slave Bill and its execution. This was especially true of the rich and &shionable churches in the great commercial towns. Surely you cannot forget the numerous clerical eulogies on the late Mr. Webster, which sought to justify all his political conduct. I do not think you have made out a very strong case for Andover.
I am sorry to have given pain to a man whose life is so noble and his character so high; but believe me,
Respectfully and truly yours,
Theodore Parker.
- ↑ Tacitus thinks it a piece of good fortune that Agricola died before such "admissions" were made evidence to ruin a man, as in Domitian's time quum Suspiria nostra subsciberentur!—Agricola, c. xlv.
- ↑ While these sheets are passing through the press I learn that three of the Marshal's guard have been arrested for crimes of violence committed within twenty-four hows after the rendition. Set a thief to serve a thief.
- ↑ "Mr. Attorney Hallett's Interference with the Purchase of the Fugitive.
"Boston, Saturday, June 3, 1854.
"To the Editors of the Atlas:—You. have called my attention to an article in your paper this morning signed ’L.,’ and to a contradiction of its statement in the Jov/mal of this evening, by authority of the United States District Attorney. I know nothing of the origin of either of these articles, but will, at your request, give you a narrative of my own connection with the recent negotiation for the freedom of ’Byrnes,' believing that such a narrative will be altogether pertinent to the fact which you seek to establish, namely, the interference of the United States District Attorney in the negotiation above referred to.
"On Saturday afternoon last, the Rev. Mr. Grimes called upon me and said that the owner of Byrnes had offered to sell him for twelve hundred dollars, and that he (Grimes) was anxious to raise the money at once. He desired my advice and assistance in the matter, and requested me to draw up a suitable subscription paper for that purpose, which I did in these words:— "'Boston, May 27, 1854. "’We, the undersigned, agree to pay to Anthony Byrnes, or order, the sum set against our respective names, for the purpose of enabling him to obtain his freedom from the United States Government, in the hands of whose officers he is now held as a slave. "’This paper will be presented by the Rev. L. A. Grimes, pastor of the 12th Baptist Church.' "’Upon this paper Mr. Grimes obtained signatures for six hundred and sixty-five dollars, and with the aid of Colonel Suttle's counsel, Messrs. Parker and Thomas, who interested themselves in this matter, four hundred dollars more were got in a check, conditionally, and held by Mr. Parker. It was agreed by me that I should be near at hand on Saturday night, to assist and advance the money, which was accordingly done; and my check for eight hundred dollars, early in the night, was placed in the hands of the United States Marshal for this purpose. About eleven o'clock, all parties being represented, we met at Mr. Commissioner Loring's office. This gentleman, with commendable alacrity, prepared necessary papers. "At this juncture the actual money was insisted on, which threatened for a time the completion of the negotiation; but anticipating this contingency, which, under all circumstances, was not an unreasonable demand, we adjourned to the Marshal's office, and I prepared myself with the needful tender. The United States Attorney, Mr. Hallett, was in attendance, and the respective parties immediately discussed the mode of procedure. The hour of twelve was rapidly approaching, after which no action could be taken. Mr. Grimes was prepared to receive Byrnes, and onxioiia to take him as he might peacefully. The matter Unbred! and official action ceased. "I am not disposed to charge any one with designedly defeating the desired end on that occasion. The business was new, the questions raised novel. But when we had proceeded thus far, and were ready in good faith to make good the sum requisite on Monday, in view also of the fHendly understanding had after midnight with all parties in interest, we had a right to expect Byrnes's liberation on Monday. When that day came, the owner refused to treat. Learning from rumour only that four thousand dollars had been named as the sum then asked for, I on Monday addressed Colonel Suttle, then in court, a respectful note, reminding him of the position of things on Saturday night, and urging that Mr. Grimes had the right to expect the original agreement to be carried out, but further asking him if any additional sum was required; to which he replied, that the case is before the Court, and must await its decision. "Tuesday morning, I had an interview with Colonel Suttle in the U. S. Marshal's office. He seemed disposed to listen to me, and met the subject in a manly way. He said he wished to take the boy back, after which he would sell him* He wanted to see the result of the trial, at any rate. I stated to him that we considered his claim to Byrnes clear enough, and that he would be delivered over to him, urging particularly upon him that the boy's liberation was not sought for except with his free consent, and his claim being folly satisfied. I urged upon him no consideration of the fear of a rescue, or possible unfavourable result of the trial to him, but offered distinctly, if he chose, to have the trial proceed, and whatever might be the result, still to satisfy his claim.
"I stated to him that the negotiation was not sustained by any society or association whatsoever, but that it was done by some of our most respectable citizens, who were desirous not to obstruct the operation of the law, but in a peaceable and honourable manner sought an adjustment of this unpleasant case; assuring him that this feeling was general among the people. I read to him a letter, addressed to me by a highly-esteemed citizen, urging me to renew my efforts to accomplish this, and placing at my disposal any amount of money that I might think proper for the purpose.
"Colonel Suttle replied that he appreciated our motives, and that he felt disposed to meet us. He then stated what he would do. I accepted his proposal at once; it was not entirely satisfactory to me, but yet, in view of his position, as he declared to me, I was content. At my request, he was about to commit our agreement to writing, when Mr. B. F. Hallett entered the office, and they two engaged in conversation apart from me. Presently Colonel Suttle returned to me, and said: 'I must withdraw what I have done with you.’ We both immediately approached Mr. Hallett, who said, pointing to the spot where Mr. Batchelder fell, in sight of which we stood, ’That blood must be avenged.’ I made some pertinent reply, rebuking so extraordinary a speech, and left the room.
"On Friday, soon after the decision had been rendered, finding Colonel Buttle had gone on board the Cutter at an early hour, I waited upon his counsel, Messrs. Thomas and Parker, at the Court-house, and there renewed my proposition. Both these gentlemen promptly interested themselves in my purpose, which was to [tender the claimant fail satisfaction, and receive the surrender of Byrnes from him, either there, in State Street, or on board the Cutter, at his own option. It was arranged between us that Mr. Parker should go at once on board the Cutter, and make an arrangement, if possible, with the Colonel.
"I provided ample funds, and returned immediately to the Courthouse, when I found that there would be difficulty in getting on board the Cutter. Application was made by me to the Marshal; he interposed no objection, and I offered to place Mr. Parker alongside the vessel. Presently Mr. Parker took me aside and said these words: 'Colonel Suttle has pledged himself to Mr. Hallett that he will not sell his boy until he gets him home.' Thus the matter ended.
"In considering, Mr. Editor, whose interference was potent in thus defeating the courteous endeavours of citizens of Boston, peacefully and with due respect to the laws of the land, to put to rest the painful scenes of the past week, it must be borne in mind that the United States Marshal, who, throughout this unfortunate negotiation, has conducted himself towards us with great consideration, consented individually to hold the funds, as a party not in interest, thus early acquiescing in the success of our plan; the owner himself was willing to release his claim; his counsel, Messrs. Thomas and Parker, volunteered their aid in raising the money, urged it, and interested themselves in its speedy accomplishment—even in the latest moment when it could be effected, with commendable alacrity, they offered their assistance; the United States Commissioner himself consented to be at his post until midnight of Saturday, to give his official service for the object—I repeat, in view of all these considerations, the conclusion must come home irresistibly to every candid mind, that there was one personage who, officially or individually, in this connection either did do, or left undone, something whereby his interference became essential to a less painful termination of this case.
"Respectfully,
"Hamilton Willis."
- ↑ Here is the note of Mr. Hayes to the city authorities; one day his children will deem it a noble trophy:—
"Boston, June 2, 1854
"To His Honour the Mayor and the Aldermen of the City of Boston:—
"Through all the excitement attendant upon the arrest and trial of the fugitive by the United States Government., I have not received an order which I have conceived inconsistent with my duties as an officer of the police until this day, at which time I have received an order which, if performed, would implicate me in the execution of that infamous 'Fugitive Slave Bill.’
"I therefore resign the office which I now hold as a Captain of the Watch and Police from this hour, 11 a.m.
"Most respectfully yours,
"Joseph K. Hayes."
- ↑ I copy this from one of the newspapers:—
"The Pay of the Boston Military for thew Aid in the Rendition of Anthony Burns.
"We write with an 'iron pen' for the benefit of some future historian, that in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty-four, in the City of Boston, there waa received for their aid in consigning to the bondage of American chattel Slavery one Anthony Burns,—by the grace of God and his own efforts a freeman,—by the independent volunteer militisl of Said city, the following sums:—
"National Lancers, Capt. Wilmarth $820.00 Boston Light Dragoons, Capt. Wright 1,128.00 Fifth Eegiment of ArtiUery, by Col. Cdwdin, for himself, Staff, and regiment 3,946.00 Boston Light Infantry, Capt. Rogers 460.00 Kew England Guards, Capt Henshaw 432.00 Pulaski Guards, Capt. Wright 328.00 Boston Light Guard, Capt. Follett 500.00 Boston City Guard, Capt. French 488.00 (of which $1.90 was paid by order to George Tonng for ’refreshments.’) Boston Independent Fusileers, Capt. Cooley 320.00 Washington Light Infantry, Capt. Upton 536.00 Mechanic Infantry, Capt. Adams 428.00 National Guard, Lient. Harlow commanding 416.00 Union Guard, Capt. Brown 476.00 Sarsfield Guard, Capt. Hogan 308.00 Boston Independent Cadets, Capt. Amory 1,136.00 Boston Light Artillery, Capt. Cobb 168.00 Major-General Edmands and staff 715.00 Major Fierce and staff of the First Battalion Light Dragoons. 146.00 Colonel Holbrook and staff of the first Regiment of Light Infantry 26.00 Brigadier-General Andrews and staff of the First Brigade 107.50 Major Burbank and staff of the Third Battalion of Light Infentry 76.00 William Bead, hardware and sporting apparatus dealer, for ammunition 155.28 Total $13,115.78" The sum paid to the civil officers of Boston for their services has not yet been made public.
Mr. Burns was subsequently sold to David McDaniel, of Nash county, K. C, on condition that he "should never he sold to go North." A most piteous letter was received from him in January, 1855, fall of pious gratitude to all who sought to preserve for him the unalienable Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Presently, after Commissioner Loring had accomplished his "legal" kidnapping, he tried to purchase a piece of meat of a noble-hearted butcher in Boylston Market. "I will take that pig,"' said the Commissioner. "You can't have it," replied the butcher. "What, is it sold?" "No, sir! But you can't buy your meat of me. I want none of your blood-money. It would burn my pocket!"
Rev. Nehemiah Adams, D.D., subsequently sent to the Commissioner a presentation copy of his South Side View of Slavery, with the author's regards!
- ↑ Reference is here made to the words used by Commissioner Loring in his "decision," citing the words of the late Chief-Justice Parker.
- ↑ See the Commissioner's "decision."
- ↑ Hon. Lemuel Shaw. See his " opinion " on the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Bill, in 7 Cushing’s Reports, p. 285, et seq.
- ↑ The culprit was held in trifling bail by the Court, one of the Marshal's gang became his surety. But the ruffian absconded, was subsequently arrested at New Orleans, and sent to the House of Correction for a year and a half.
- ↑ While this Sermon is passing through the press, I find the following paragraph in a newspaper:—
"One of the Fourth of July celebrations at Columbus, Ga., was the sale of ninety or a hundred men, women, and boys, by the order of Robert Toombs, United States Senator. Here is the advertisement:—
"Administrator's Sale.—Will be sold on the first Tuesday in July next, at the Court House door of Stewart County, within the usual hours of sale, between ninety and one hundred negroes, consisting of men, women, boys, etc. These negroes are all very likely, and between forty and fifty of the number are men and boys. Sold as the property of Henry J. Pope, deceased, in pursuance of an order of the Court of Ordinary of Stewart County, for the benefit of heirs and creditors. Terms of sale, a credit (with interest) until 26th December next."Robert Toombs,
"’Adm’r of Henry J. Pope, deceased.'
"'Men, women, and boys,’ bought on the Fourth of July,—paid for on Christmas!"
- ↑ See Appendix.