Contrary to the purposes declared by the framers of the Constitution, it sends the fugitive back “at the public expense.”[370]
Adding meanness to violation of the Constitution, it bribes the commissioner by a double fee to pronounce against Freedom. If he dooms a man to Slavery, the reward is ten dollars; but saving him to Freedom, his dole is five dollars.
As it is for the public weal that there should be an end of suits, so, by the consent of civilized nations, these must be instituted within fixed limitations of time; but the Fugitive Act, exalting Slavery above even this practical principle of universal justice, ordains proceedings against Freedom without reference to lapse of time.
Careless of the feelings and conscientious convictions of good men who cannot help the work of thrusting a fellow-being back into bondage, this Act declares that “all good citizens are hereby commanded to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution of this law”;[371] and this injunction is addressed to all alike, not excepting those who religiously believe that the Divine mandate is as binding now as when it was first given to the Hebrews of old: “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: he shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him.”[372] The thunder of Sinai is silent, and the ancient judgments have ceased; but an Act of Congress, which, besides its direct violation of this early law, offends every sentiment of Christianity, must expect the judgments of men, even if it escapes those of Heaven. Perhaps the sorrows and funerals of this war are so many warnings to do justice.
But this Act is to be seen not merely in its open defiance of the Constitution, and of all legislative decencies; it must be considered, also, in two other aspects: first, in its consequences; and, secondly, in the character of its authors. The time has come, at last, when each of these may be exposed.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT.
And, first, as to its consequences. In the history of the African race these can never be forgotten. Since the first authorization of the slave-trade, nothing so terrible had fallen upon this unhappy people, whether we contemplate its cruelty to individuals or the wide-spread proscription which it launched against all whose skins were not white.
It is sad to know of suffering anywhere, even by a single lowly person. But our feelings are enhanced, when individual sorrows are multiplied, and the blow descends upon a whole race. History, too, takes up the grief. The Jews expelled from Spain by merciless decree, the Huguenots driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, our own Puritan fathers compelled to exile for religious Freedom,—all these receive a gushing sympathy, and we detest the tyrants. These were persecutions for religion, in days of religious bigotry and darkness. But an American Congress, in this age of Christian light, not in the fanaticism of religion, but in the fanaticism of Slavery, did a deed that finds companionship only with these enormities of the past. The Fugitive Slave Act carried distress and terror to every person with African blood in the Free States. All were fluttered, as the arbitrary edict commenced its swoop over the land. The very rumor that a slave-hunter was in town so shook the nerves of a sensitive freeman on whom was the ban of color, that he died. To large numbers the Act was a decree of instant expulsion from the Republic, under penalty of Slavery to them and their posterity forever. Driven by despair, as many as six thousand Christian men and women, meritorious persons,—a larger band than that of the escaping Puritans,—precipitately fled from homes they had established, opportunities of usefulness they had found, and the regard of fellow-citizens, until, at last, in an unwelcome Northern climate, beneath the British flag, with glad voices of Freedom on their lips, though with the yearnings of exile in their hearts, they were happy in swelling the chant, “God save the Queen!”
Such an injustice cannot be restricted in influence. Everywhere it is an extension of Slavery, with all the wrong, violence, and brutality which are the natural outgrowth of Slavery. The Free States became little better than a huge outlying plantation quivering under the lash of the overseer; or rather, they were a diversified hunting-ground for the flying bondmen, resounding always with the “halloo” of the huntsman. There seemed no rest. The chase was hardly over at Boston before it was started at Philadelphia, Syracuse, or Buffalo, and then again raged furiously across the prairies of the West. Not an instance occurred which did not shock the conscience of the country and sting it with anger. Records of the time attest the accuracy of this statement. Perhaps there is no example in history where human passion showed itself in grander forms, or eloquence lent all her gifts more completely to the demands of Liberty, than the speech of an eminent character, now dead and buried in a foreign land,[373] denouncing the capture of Thomas Sims at Boston, and invoking the judgment of God and man upon the agents in this wickedness. In the history of Humanity this great effort cannot be forgotten. But every case pleaded with an eloquence of its own, until, at last, occurred one of those tragedies darkening the heavens and crying out with a voice that will be heard. It was the voice of a mother standing over her murdered child. Margaret Garner escaped from Slavery with three children, but was overtaken at Cincinnati. Unwilling to behold her offspring returned to the shambles of the South, this unhappy person, described in the testimony as “a womanly, amiable, affectionate mother,” determined to save them in the only way within her power. With a butcher-knife, coolly and deliberately, she took the life of one of the children, “almost white, and a little girl of rare beauty,” and attempted, without success, to take the life of the other two. To the preacher who interrogated her she exclaimed: “The child was my own, given me of God to do the best a mother could in its behalf. I have done the best I could; I would have done more and better for the rest; I knew it was better for them to go home to God than back to Slavery.” But she was restrained in her purpose. The Fugitive Slave Act triumphed, and, after the determination of sundry questions of jurisdiction, this devoted historic mother, with the two children remaining to her, and the dead body of the little one just emancipated, under a national escort of armed men, was hurried to the doom of Slavery. Her case did not end with this revolting sacrifice. So long as the human heart is moved by human suffering, the story of this mother will be read with alternate anger and grief, while it is studied as a perpetual witness to the slaveholding tyranny which then ruled the Republic with execrable exactions, destined at last to break out in war,—as the sacrifice of Virginia by her father is a perpetual witness to the decemviral tyranny which ruled Rome.