FOOTNOTES:
[1] Vide Executive documents of the 2d Session 13th Congress.
[2] It is believed that this report was suggested by the humanity of Col. Clinch. He was reputed one of the bravest and most energetic officers in the service. He possessed an indomitable perseverance, and could probably have captured the Fort in one hour, had he desired to do so.
[3] That is the number officially reported by the officer in command, vide Executive doc. of the 13th Congress.
The Fugitive Slave Act.
Few laws have ever been passed better calculated than this to harden the heart and benumb the conscience of every man who assists in its execution. It pours contempt upon the dictates of justice and humanity. It levels in the dust the barriers erected by the common law for the protection of personal liberty. Its victims are native born Americans, uncharged with crime. These men are seized, without notice, and instantly carried before an officer, by whom they are generally hurried off into a cruel bondage, for the remainder of their days, and sometimes without time being allowed for a parting interview with their families. Such treatment would be cruel toward criminals; but these men are adjudged to toil, to stripes, to ignorance, to poverty, to hopeless degradation, on the pretence that they "owe service." This allegation all know to be utterly false, they having never promised to serve, and being legally incapable of making any contract. Every act of Christian kindness to these unhappy people, tending to secure to them the rights which our declaration of independence asserts belong to all men, is made by this accursed law a penal offence, to be punished with fine and imprisonment. Mock judges, unknown to the constitution, and bribed by the promise of double fees to re-enslave the fugitive, are commanded to decide, summarily, the most momentous personal issue, with the single exception of life and death, that could possibly engage the attention of a legal tribunal of the most august character. Yet this tremendous issue of liberty or bondage, is to be decided, not only in a hurry, but on such prima facie evidence as may satisfy the judge, and this judge, too, selected from a herd of similar creatures, by the claimant himself!! An ex parte affidavit, made by an absent and interested party, with the certificate of an absent judge that he believes it to be true, is to be received as conclusive, in the face of any amount of oral and documentary testimony to the contrary. "Can a man take fire into his bosom and not be burned?" Can a man aid in executing such a law without defiling his own conscience? Yet does this profligate statute, with impious arrogance, command "all good citizens" to assist in enforcing it, when required so to do by an official slave-catcher!
It is a singular fact, in the history of this enactment, that Mr. Mason, who introduced the bill, and Mr. Webster, who, in advance, pledged to it his support "to the fullest extent," both confessed, on the floor of Congress, that in their individual judgments, it was unconstitutional,—that is, that the constitution, as they expounded it, imposed upon the States severally, the obligation to surrender fugitive slaves, and gave Congress no power to legislate on the subject. The Supreme Court, however, having otherwise determined, these gentlemen acquiesced in its decision, without being convinced by it. It is well known how grossly Mr. Webster, in his subsequent canvass for the Presidency, insulted all who, like himself, denied the constitutionality of the law. Another significant fact in the same history is, that the law was passed by a minority of the House of Representatives. Of 232 members, only 109 recorded their names in its favor. Many, deterred either by scruples of conscience or doubts of the popularity of the measure, declined voting, while party discipline prevented them from offering to it an open and manly resistance. A third fact in this history, worthy to be remembered, is, that the advocates of the law are conscious that its revolting provisions would not bear discussion, forced its passage under the previous question, thus preventing any remarks on its enormities—any appeals to the consciences of the members—against the perpetration of such detestable wickedness.
Seldom has any public iniquity been committed to which the words of the Psalmist have been so applicable: "Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee; and the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain."
It was happily so ordered, that several of the early seizures and surrenders under this law were conducted with such marked barbarity, such cruel indecent haste, such wanton disregard of justice and of humanity, as to shock the moral sense of the community, and to render the law intensely hateful.
Very soon after the law went into operation, one of the pseudo judges created by it, surrendered an alleged slave, on evidence which no jury would have deemed sufficient to establish a title to a dog. In vain the wretched man declared his freedom—in vain he named six witnesses whom he swore could prove his freedom—in vain he implored for a delay of one hour. He was sent off as a slave, guarded, at the expense of the United States treasury, to his pretended master in Maryland, who honestly refused to receive him. The judge had made a mistake (!) and had sent a free man instead of a slave.
This vile law, although of course receiving the sanction of the Democrats, it being a bid for the Presidency, was a device of the Whig party, and could not have been carried but by the co-operation of Webster, Clay, and Fillmore. As if to enhance the value of the bid, the Administration affected a desire to baptise it in northern blood, by making resistance to the law, a crime to be punished with death. The hustling of an officer, and the consequent escape of an arrested fugitive, were declared, by the Secretary of State, to be a levying of war against the United States—of course an act of high treason, to be expiated on the gallows; and the rioters at Christiana were prosecuted for high treason, in pursuance of orders forwarded from Washington. This wretched sycophancy won no favor from the slaveholders, and the result of the abominable and absurd prosecution only brought on the authors and advocates of the law fresh obloquy. When men obtain some rich and splendid prize, by their wrong-doing, many admire their boldness and dexterity, but foolish, profitless wickedness ensures only contempt. The northern Whigs, in doing obeisance to the slave power, sinned against their oft-repeated and solemn professions and pledges. They sinned in the expectation of thereby electing a President, and enjoying the patronage he would dispense. Most bitterly were these men disappointed, first in the candidate selected, and next in the result of the election. The party has been beaten to death, and it died unhonored and unwept. Let the Fugitive Slave Law be its epitaph. Truly the Whig politicians were "snared in the work of their own hands."
Certain fashionable Divines deemed it expedient to second the efforts of the politicians in catching slaves, by talking from their pulpits about Hebrew slavery, and the reverence due to the "powers that be ordained of God." Yet the injunctions of the fugitive law were so obviously at variance with the "higher law" of justice and mercy which these gentlemen were required by their Divine Master to inculcate, that "cotton divinity" fell into disrepute, nor could the plaudits of politicians and union committees save its clerical professors from forfeiting the esteem and confidence of multitudes of Christian people.
But Whig politicians and cotton Divines are not the only friends of the fugitive law to whom it has made most ungrateful returns. The Democratic leaders, bidding against the Whigs for the Presidency, were most vociferous in expressions of the delight they took in the human chase. Democratic candidates for the Presidency, to the goodly number of nine, gave public attestations under their signs manual, of their approbation of a law outraging the principles of Democracy, as well as of common justice and humanity. Each and all of these men were rejected, and the slaveholders selected an individual whom they were well assured would be their obsequious tool, but who had offered no bribe for their votes.
But did the slaveholders themselves gain more by this law than their northern auxiliaries? They, indeed, hailed its passage as a mighty triumph. The nation had given them a law, drafted by themselves, laying down the rules of the hunt, as best suited their pleasure and interest. Wealthy and influential gentlemen in our commercial cities, out of compliment to southern electors, became amateur huntsmen, and in New York and Boston the chase was pursued with all the zeal and apparent delight that could have been expected in Guinea or Virginia. Slave-catching was the test, at once, of patriotism and gentility, while sympathy for the wretched fugitive was the mark of vulgar fanaticism. The north was humbled in the dust, by the action of her own recreant sons. Every "good citizen" found himself, for the first time in the history of mankind, a slave-catcher by law. Every official, appointed by a slave-catching judge, was invested with the authority of a High Sheriff, being empowered to call out the posse comitatus, and compel the neighbors to join in a slave chase. Well, indeed, might the slaveholders rejoice and make merry;—well, indeed, in the insolence of triumph, might they command the people of the north to hold their tongues about "the peculiar institution," under pain of their sore displeasure.
But amid this slavery jubilee, a woman's heart was swelling and heaving with indignant sorrow at the outrages offered to God and man by the fugitive law. Her pent up emotions struggled for utterance, and at last, as if moved by some mighty inspiration, and in all the fervor of Christian love, she put forth a book which arrested the attention of the world. A miracle of authorship, this book attained, within twelve months, a circulation without a parallel in the history of printing. In that brief space, about two millions of volumes proclaimed, in the languages of civilization, the wrongs of the slave and the atrocities of the american fugitive law. The gaze of mankind is now turned upon the slaveholders and their northern auxiliaries, both clerical and lay. The subjects of European despotisms console themselves with the grateful conviction, that however harsh may be their own governments, they make no approach to the baseness or to the cruelty and tyranny of the "peculiar institution" of the Model Republic.[4]
One slaveholder, together with the cotton men of the north, fretted and vexed by their sudden and unenviable notoriety, foolishly attempted to obviate the impressions made by the book, by denouncing it as a lying fiction. Nay, one of the most affecting illustrations of pure and undefiled Christianity that ever proceeded from an uninspired pen, was gravely declared, by an organ of cotton divinity, to be an Anti-Christian book.[5] Truly, indeed, the wisdom of man is foolishness with God. "He disappointeth the devices of the crafty."
Branded with falsehood and impiety, the author was happily put on her trial before the civilized world. She collected, arranged, and gave to the press, a mass of unimpeachable documents, consisting of laws, judicial decisions, trials, confessions of slaveholders, advertisements from southern papers, and testimonies of eye-witnesses. The proof was conclusive and overwhelming that the picture she had drawn of American slavery was unfaithful, only because the coloring was faint, and wanted the crimson dye of the original. A verdict of not guilty of exaggeration has been rendered by acclamation.
It has long been the standing refuge of the slaveholders, that northern men and Europeans, in condemning slavery, were passing judgment against an institution of which they were ignorant. The "peculiar institution" was represented as some great mystery which could not be understood beyond the slave region. Thanks to the fugitive law, it has led to the construction of a "key," which has unlocked our Republican bastile, thrown open to the sunlight its hideous dungeons, and exposed the various instruments of torture for subjecting the soul, as well as the body, to hopeless and unresisting bondage. The iniquity of our cherished institution is no longer a MYSTERY. All Christendom is now made familiar with it, and is sending forth a cry of indignant remonstrance and of taunting scorn. Such is the suppression of anti-slavery agitation given to the slaveholders by their northern friends—such the strength imparted by the fugitive slave law to the system of human bondage. How applicable to the inventors and supporters of that statute are the words of David, in regard to some politician of his own day: "Behold he travaileth with iniquity, and hath conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood. He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made. His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate;" and then he adds, "I will praise the Lord." So also let the Christian bless and magnify Him, who by his infinite wisdom brings good out of evil, and in the case of the fugitive law, hath caused the wrath of man to praise Him.
But there is still a remainder of wrath. The law is still on the Statute Book, and hungry politicians are promising that there it shall ever remain; and terrible threats come from the south, of the ruin that shall overwhelm the free States, should the law be repealed or rendered less abominable than at present. Yet, in spite of northern promises, and professions of security, and in spite of the great swelling words of the dealers in human flesh, the practical, like the moral working of the law, has been very far from what its authors anticipated. The law was passed the 18th September, 1850, and, in two years and nine months, not fifty slaves have been recovered under it—not an average of eighteen slaves a year! Poor compensation this to the slaveholders for making themselves a bye-word, a proverb, and a reproach to Christendom—for giving a new and mighty impulse to abolition, and for deepening the detestation felt by the true friends of liberty and humanity, for an institution asking and obtaining for its protection a law so repugnant to the moral sense of mankind. But while this artful and wicked law, with its army of ten-dollar judges, and marshals, and constables, and office-seekers, and politicians, with the President and his cabinet all striving to enforce it, "to the fullest extent," has restored to their masters not eighteen slaves a year; the escapes from the prison house have probably never been more numerous, nor the aid and sympathy afforded by Christians more abundant. Thus has the remainder of wrath been restrained. In the marvellous conversion of this odious law into an anti-slavery agency, let us find a new motive for unceasing and unwearied agitation against slavery, and a new pledge of ultimate triumph.
(signature) William Jay
Bedford, June 1853.