The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 3 of 4

by American Anti-Slavery Society

If we look into the legislative halls, slavery is seen in the chair of the presiding officer of each, and controlling the action of both. Slavery occupies, by prescriptive right, the Presidential chair. The paramount voice that comes from the temple of national justice, issues from the lips of slavery. The army is in the hands of slavery, and at her bidding, must encamp in the everglades of Florida, or march from the Missouri to the borders of Mexico, to look after her interests in Texas.

The navy, even that part that is cruising off the coast of Africa, to suppress the foreign slave trade, is in the hands of slavery.

Freemen of the North, who have even dared to lift up their voice against slavery, cannot travel through the slave States, but at the peril of their lives.

The representatives of freemen are forbidden, on the floor on Congress, to remonstrate against the encroachments of slavery, or to pray that she would let her poor victims go.

I renounce my allegiance to a Constitution that enthrones such a power, wielded for the purpose of depriving me of my rights, of robbing my countrymen of their liberties, and of securing its own protection, support and perpetuation.

Passing by that clause of the Constitution, which restricted Congress for twenty years, from passing any law against the African slave trade, and which gave authority to raise a revenue on the stolen sons of Africa, I come to that part of the fourth article, which guarantees protection against "domestic violence," and which pledges to the South the military force of the country, to protect the masters against their insurgent slaves: binds us, and our children, to shoot down our fellow-countrymen, who may rise, in emulation of our revolutionary fathers, to vindicate their inalienable "right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,"—this clause of the Constitution, I say distinctly, I never will support.

That part of the Constitution which provides for the surrender of fugitive slaves, I never have supported and never will. I will join in no slave-hunt. My door shall stand open, as it has long stood, for the panting and trembling victim of the slave-hunter. When I shut it against him, may God shut the door of her mercy against me! Under this clause of the Constitution, and designed to carry it into effect, slavery has demanded that laws should be passed, and of such a character, as have left the free citizen of the North without protection for his own liberty. The question, whether a man seized in a free State as a slave, is a slave or not, the law of Congress does not allow a jury to determine: but refers it to the decision of a Judge of a United State' Court, or even of the humblest State magistrate, it may be, upon the testimony or affidavit of the party most deeply interested to support the claim. By virtue of this law, freemen have been seized and dragged into perpetual slavery—and should I be seized by a slave-hunter in any part of the country where I am not personally known, neither the Constitution nor laws of the United States would shield me from the same destiny.

These, sir, are the specific parts of the Constitution of the united States, which in my opinion are essentially vicious, hostile at once to the liberty and to the morals of the nation. And these are the principal reasons of my refusal any longer to acknowledge my allegiance to it, and of my determination to revoke my oath to support it. I cannot, in order to keep the law of man, break the law of God, or solemnly call him to witness my promise that I will break it.

It is true that the Constitution provides for its own amendment, and that by this process, all the guarantees of Slavery may be expunged. But it will be time enough to swear to support it when this is done. It cannot be right to do so, until these amendments are made.

It is also true that the framers of the Constitution did studiously keep the words "Slave" and "Slavery" from its face. But to do our constitutional fathers justice, while they forebore—from very shame—to give the word "Slavery" a place in the Constitution, they did not forbear—again to do them justice—to give place in it to the thing. They were careful to wrap up the idea, and the substance of Slavery, in the clause for the surrender of the fugitive, though they sacrificed justice in doing so.