The Hon. Josiah Quincy, senior, whose integrity, noble intellect, and long experience in public life, give great weight to his opinions, made a speech at a Whig Convention in Boston, 1854, from which I extract the following: — "The circumstances in which the people of Massachusetts are placed are undeniably insupportable. What has been seen, what has been felt, by every man, woman and child in this metropolis, and in this community? and virtually by every man, woman and child in Massachusetts? We have seen our Court House in chains, two battalions of dragoons, eight regiments of artillery, twelve companies of infantry, the whole constabulary force of the city police, the entire disposable marine of the United States, with its artillery loaded for action, all marching in support of a Praetorian Band, consisting of one hundred and twenty friends and associates of the U.S. Marshal, with loaded pistols and drawn swords, and in military costume and array; and for what purpose? To escort and conduct a poor trembling slave from a Boston Court House to the fetters and lash of his master!
"This scene, thus awful, thus detestable, every inhabitant of this metropolis, nay, every inhabitant of this Commonwealth, may be compelled again to witness, at any time, and every day in the year, at the will or the whim of the meanest and basest slaveholder of the South. Is there a man in Massachusetts with a spirit so low, so debased, so corrupted by his fears, or his fortune, that he is prepared to say this is a condition of things to be endured in perpetuity by us? and that this is an inheritance to be transmitted by us to our children, for all generations? For so long as the fugitive-slave clause remains in the Constitution, unobliterated, it is an obligation perpetual upon them, as well as upon us.
"The obligation incumbent upon the Free States must be obliterated from the Constitution, at every hazard. I believe that, in the nature of things, by the law of God, and the laws of man, that clause is at this moment abrogated, so far as respects common obligation. In 1789, the Free States agreed to be field-drivers and pound-keepers for the Slaveholding States, within the limits, and according to the fences, of the old United States. But between that year and this A.D. 1854, the slaveholders have broken down the old boundaries, and opened new fields, of an unknown and indefinite extent.1 They have multiplied their slaves by millions, and are every day increasing their numbers, and extending their field into the wilderness. Under these circumstances, are we bound to be their field-drivers and pound-keepers any longer? Answer me, people of Massachusetts! Are you the sons of the men of 1776? Or do you 'lack gall, to make oppression bitter?'
"I have pointed out your burden. I have shown you that it is insupportable. I shall be asked how we are to get rid of it. It is not for a private individual to point the path which a State is to pursue, to cast off an insupportable burden; it belongs to the constituted authorities of that State. But this I will say, that if the people of Massachusetts solemnly adopt, as one man, in the spirit of their fathers, the resolve that they will no longer submit to this burden, and will call upon the Free States to concur in this resolution, and carry it into effect, the burden will be cast off; the fugitive-slave clause will be obliterated, not only without the dissolution of the Union, but with a newly-acquired strength to the Union.".
In the spring of 1860, there was a debate on this subject in the Legislature of New York. In the course of it, Mr. Smith, of Chatauqua, said: — "How came slavery in this country? It came here without law; in violation of all law. It came here by force and violence; by the force of might over right; and it remains here to-day by no better title. And now we are called upon, by the ruling power at Washington, not merely to tolerate it, but to legalize it all over the United States! By the Fugitive Slave Bill, we are forbidden to shelter or assist the forlornest stranger who ever appealed for sympathy or aid. We are required by absolute law to shut out every feeling of compassion for suffering humanity. Fines and imprisonment impend over us, for exercising one of the holiest charities of our religion. Virtue and humanity are legislated into crime. Let us meet the issue like men! Let us assert our utter abhorrence of all human laws, that compel us to violate the common law of humanity and justice; and by so acting assert the broad principles of the Declaration of American Independence, and the letter and spirit of the Constitution. If the North was as devoted to the cause of Freedom as the South is to Slavery, our national troubles would vanish like darkness before the sun. Our country would then become what it should be, — free, happy, prosperous, and respected by all the world. Then we could say, truthfully, that she is the home of the free, the land of the brave, the asylum of the oppressed."
In the same debate, Mr. Maxson, of Allegheny, said: — "All laws, whether Constitutions or statutes, that invade human rights, are null. A community has no more power to strike down the rights of man by Constitutions, than by any other means. Do those who give us awfully solemn lessons about the inviolability of compacts, mean that one man is bound to rob another because he has agreed to? In this age of schools, of churches and of Bibles, do they mean to teach us that an agreement to rob men of their rights, in whatever solemn form that agreement may be written out, is binding? Has the morality of the nineteenth century culminated in this, that a mere compact can convert vice into virtue? These advocates of the rightfulness of robbery, because it has been agreed, to, and that agreement has been written down, have come too late upon the stage, by more than two hundred years. Where does the proud Empire State wish to be recorded in that great history, which is being so rapidly filled out with the records of this "irrepressible conflict"? For myself, a humble citizen of the State, I ask no prouder record for her than that, in the year 1860, she enacted that the moment a man sets foot on her soil, he is free, against the world!"
Wendell Phillips, one of earth's bravest and best, made a speech at Worcester, 1851, from which I make the following extract: — "Mr. Mann, Mr. Giddings, and other leaders of the Free Soil party, are ready to go to the death against the Fugitive Slave Law. It never should be enforced, they say. It robs men of the jury trial, it robs them of habeas corpus, and forty other things. This is a very good position. But how much comfort would it have been to Ellen Crafts, if she had been sent back to Macon, to know that it had been done with a scrupulous observance of all the forms of habeas corpus and jury trial? When she got back, some excellent friend might have said to her, 'My dear Ellen, you had the blessed privilege of habeas corpus and jury trial. What are you grieving about? You were sent back according to law and the Constitution. What could you want more?' From the statements of our Free Soil friends, you would suppose that the habeas corpus was the great safeguard of a slave's freedom; that it covered him as with an angel's wing. But suppose habeas corpus and jury trial granted, what then? Is any man to be even so surrendered, with our consent? No slave shall be sent back — except by habeas corpus. Stop half short of that! No slave shall be sent back!"
Rev. A.D. Mayo, of Albany, is one of those clergymen who believe that a religious teacher has something to do with questions affecting public morality; and his preaching is eloquent, because he is fearlessly obedient to his own convictions. In a Sermon on the Fugitive Slave Bill, he said: — "Remember that despotism has no natural rights on earth that any man is bound to respect. I know there is no political party, no Christian sect, no Northern State, as a whole, yet fully up to this. But the Christian sentiment of the country will finally bring us all to the same conclusion."
NO SLAVE HUNT IN OUR BORDERS!
THE HIGHER LAW.
ON THE SURRENDER OF A FUGITIVE SLAVE.
STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.
1 The Hon. Josiah Quincy, while in Congress, always opposed the annexation of foreign territory to the United States, on the ground of its unconstitutionality.