What safety or guarantee have we for ourselves or families? Let us, for a moment, examine this point.
Supposing some hired spy of the slave power residing in Illinois, whom, for illustration, we shall call Stephen A., Counsellor B., a mercenary hireling of New York, and Commissioner C., a slave catcher of Pennsylvania, should take umbrage at the acts or doings of any colored person or persons in a free state; they may, with impunity, send or go on their knight errantry to the South (as did a hireling of the slave power in New York—a lawyer by profession), give a description of such person or persons, and an agent with warrants may be immediately despatched to swear them into slavery forever.
We tell you, fellow-countrymen, any one of you here assembled—your humble committee who report to you this paper—may, by the laws of this land, be seized, whatever the circumstances of his birth, whether he descends from free or slave parents—whether born north or south of Mason and Dixon’s line—and ere the setting of another sun, be speeding his way to that living sepulchre and death-chamber of our race—the curse and scourge of this country—the southern part of the United States. This is not idle speculation, but living, naked, undisguised truth.
A member of your committee has received a letter from a gentleman of respectability and standing in the South, who writes to the following effect. We copy his own words:—
“There are, at this moment, as I was to-day informed by Colonel W., one of our first magistrates in this city, a gang of from twenty-five to thirty vagabonds of poor white men, who, for twenty-five dollars a head, clear of all expenses, are ready and willing to go to the North, make acquaintance with the blacks in various places, send their descriptions to unprincipled slaveholders here,—for there are many of this kind to be found among the poorer class of masters,—and swear them into bondage. So the free blacks, as well as fugitive slaves, will have to keep a sharp watch over themselves to get clear of this scheme to enslave them.”
Here, then, you have but a paragraph in the great volume of this political crusade and legislative pirating by the American people over the rights and privileges of the colored inhabitants of the country. If this be but a paragraph,—for such it is in truth,—what must be the contents when the whole history is divulged! Never will the contents of this dreadful record of crime, corruption, and oppression be fully revealed, until the trump of God shall proclaim the universal summons to judgment. Then, and then alone, shall the whole truth be acknowledged, when the doom of the criminal shall be forever sealed.
We desire not to be sentimental, but rather would be political; and therefore call your attention to another point—a point already referred to.
In giving the statistics of various countries, and preferences to many places herein mentioned, as points of destination in emigration, we have said little or nothing concerning the present governments, the various state departments, nor the condition of society among the people.
This is not the province of your committee, but the legitimate office of a Board of Foreign Commissioners, whom there is no doubt will be created by the convention, with provisions and instructions to report thereon, in due season, of their mission.
With a few additional remarks on the subject of the British Provinces of North America, we shall have done our duty, and completed, for the time being, the arduous, important, and momentous task assigned to us.