An able-bodied colored man sells in the southern market for from eight hundred to a thousand dollars; of course he is worth stealing. Colonizationists and slaveholders, and many northern divines, solemnly affirm, that the situation of a slave is far preferable to that of a free negro; hence it would seem an act of humanity to convert the latter into the former. Kidnapping being both a lucrative and a benevolent business, it is not strange it should be extensively practised. In many of the States this business is regulated by law, and there are various ways in which the transmutation is legally effected. Thus, in South Carolina, if a free negro "entertains" a runaway slave, it may be his own wife or child, he himself is turned into a slave. In 1827, a free woman and her three children underwent this benevolent process, for entertaining two fugitive children of six and nine years old. In Virginia all emancipated slaves remaining twelve months in the State, are kindly restored to their former condition. In Maryland a free negro who marries a white woman, thereby acquires all the privileges of a slave—and generally, throughout the slave region, including the District of Columbia, every negro not known to be free, is mercifully considered as a slave, and if his master cannot be ascertained, he is thrown into a dungeon, and there kept, till by a public sale a master can be provided for him. But often the law grants to colored men, known to be free, all the advantages of slavery. Thus, in Georgia, every free colored man coming into the State, and unable to pay a fine of one hundred dollars, becomes a slave for life; in Florida, insolvent debtors, if black, are SOLD for the benefit of their creditors; and in the District of Columbia a free colored man, thrown into jail on suspicion of being a slave and proving his freedom, is required by law to be sold as a slave, if too poor to pay his jail fees. Let it not be supposed that these laws are all obsolete and inoperative. They catch many a northern negro, who, in pursuit of his own business, or on being decoyed by others ventures to enter the slave region; and who, of course, helps to augment the wealth of our southern brethren. On the 6th of March, 1839, a report by a Committee was made to the House of Representatives of the Massachusetts Legislature, in which are given the names of seventeen free colored men who had been enslaved at the south. It also states an instance in which twenty-five colored citizens, belonging to Massachusetts, were confined at one time in a southern jail, and another instance in which 75 free colored persons from different free States were confined, all preparatory to their sale as slaves according to law.
The facts disclosed in this report induced the Massachusetts Legislature to pass a resolution protesting against the kidnapping laws of the slave States, "as invading the sacred rights of citizens of this commonwealth, as contrary to the Constitution of the United States, and in utter derogation of that great principle of the common law which presumes every person to be innocent until proved to be guilty;" and ordered the protest to be forwarded to the Governors of the several States.
But it is not at the south alone that freemen may be converted into slaves "according to law." The Act of Congress respecting the recovery of fugitive slaves, affords most extraordinary facilities for this process, through official corruption and individual perjury. By this Act, the claimant is permitted to select a justice of the peace, before whom he may bring or send his alleged slave, and even to prove his property by affidavit. Indeed, in almost every State in the Union, a slaveholder may recover at law a human being as his beast of burden with far less ceremony than he could his pig from the possession of his neighbor. In only three States is a man, claimed as a slave, entitled to a trial by jury. At the last session of the New York Legislature a bill allowing a jury trial in such cases was passed by the lower House, but rejected by a democratic vote in the Senate, democracy in that State, being avowedly only skin deep, all its principles of liberty, equality, and human rights depending on complexion.
Considering the wonderful ease and expedition with which fugitives may be recovered by law, it would be very strange if mistakes did not sometimes occur. How often they occur cannot, of course, be known, and it is only when a claim is defeated, that we are made sensible of the exceedingly precarious tenure by which a poor friendless negro at the north holds his personal liberty. A few years since, a girl of the name of Mary Gilmore was arrested in Philadelphia, as a fugitive slave from Maryland. Testimony was not wanting in support of the claim; yet it was most conclusively proved that she was the daughter of poor Irish parents—having not a drop of negro blood in her veins—that the father had absconded, and that the mother had died a drunkard in the Philadelphia hospital, and that the infant had been kindly received and brought up in a colored family. Hence the attempt to make a slave of her. In the spring of 1839, a colored man was arrested in Philadelphia, on a charge of having absconded from his owner twenty-three years before. This man had a wife and family depending upon him, and a home where he enjoyed their society; and yet, unless he could find witnesses who could prove his freedom for more than this number of years, he was to be torn from his wife, his children, his home, and doomed for the remainder of his days to toil under the lash. Four witnesses for the claimant swore to his identity, although they had not seen him before for twenty-three years! By a most extraordinary coincidence, a New England Captain, with whom this negro had sailed twenty-nine years before, in a sloop from Nantucket, happened at this very time to be confined for debt in the same prison with the alleged slave, and the Captain's testimony, together with that of some other witnesses, who had known the man previous to his pretended elopement, so fully established his freedom, that the Court discharged him.
Another mode of legal kidnapping still remains to be described. By the Federal Constitution, fugitives from justice are to be delivered up, and under this constitutional provision, a free negro may be converted into a slave without troubling even a Justice of the Peace to hear the evidence of the captor's claim. A fugitive slave is, of course, a felon—he not only steals himself, but also the rags on his back which belong to his master. It is understood he has taken refuge in New York, and his master naturally wishes to recover him with as little noise, trouble, and delay as possible. The way is simple and easy. Let the Grand Jury indict A.B. for stealing wearing apparel, and let the indictment, with an affidavit of the criminal's flight, be forwarded by the Governor of the State, to his Excellency of New York, with a requisition for the delivery of A.B., to the agent appointed to receive him. A warrant is, of course, issued to "any Constable of the State of New York," to arrest A.B. For what purpose?—to bring him before a magistrate where his identity may be established?—no, but to deliver him up to the foreign agent. Hence, the Constable may pick up the first likely negro he finds in the street, and ship him to the south; and should it be found, on his arrival on the plantation, that the wrong man has come, it will also probably be found that the mistake is of no consequence to the planter. A few years since, the Governor of New York signed a warrant for the apprehension of 17 Virginia negroes, as fugitives from justice.[[103]] Under this warrant, a man who had lived in the neighborhood for three years, and had a wife and children, and who claimed to be free, was seized, on a Sunday evening, in the public highway, in West Chester County, N.Y., and without being permitted to take leave of his family, was instantly hand-cuffed, thrown into a carriage, and hurried to New York, and the next morning was on his voyage to Virginia.
[Footnote [103]: There is no evidence that he knew they were negroes; or that he acted otherwise than in perfect good faith. The alleged crime was stealing a boat. The real crime, it is said, was stealing themselves and escaping in a boat. The most horrible abuses of these warrants can only be prevented by requiring proof of identity before delivery.]
Free colored men are converted into slaves not only by law, but also contrary to law. It is, of course, difficult to estimate the extent to which illegal kidnapping is carried, since a large number of cases must escape detection. In a work published by Judge Stroud, of Philadelphia, in 1827, he states, that it had been ascertained that more than thirty free colored persons, mostly children, had been kidnapped in that city within the last two years.[[104]]
[Footnote [104]: Stroud's Sketch of the Slave Laws, p. 94.]
10. SUBJECTION TO INSULT AND OUTRAGE.
The feeling of the community towards these people, and the contempt with which they are treated, are indicated by the following notice, lately published by the proprietors of a menagerie, in New York. "The proprietors wish it to be understood, that people of color are not permitted to enter, except when in attendance upon children and families." For two shillings, any white scavenger would be freely admitted, and so would negroes, provided they came in a capacity that marked their dependence—their presence is offensive, only when they come as independent spectators, gratifying a laudable curiosity.