You do not think your law more barbarous than that of 1793. Let me further enlighten you. Judge McLean of the Supreme Court, in his opinion delivered last May in the case of Norris v. Newton et al., remarks,—"In regard to the arrest of fugitives from labor, the law [act of 1793] does not impose any active duties on our citizens generally"; and he argues in defence of the law, that "it gives no one a just right to complain; he has only to refrain from an express violation of the law." In other words, the law only required individuals to be passive spectators of a horrible outrage, and did not compel them to be active participators in other men's villany. Now, what says your law? Why, that every commissioner may appoint as many official slave-catchers as he pleases, and that each of these menials may "summon and call to their aid the by-standers or posse comitatus of the proper county, when necessary to insure a faithful observance of the clause of the Constitution referred to in conformity with the provisions of this act, AND ALL GOOD CITIZENS ARE HEREBY COMMANDED TO AID AND ASSIST in the prompt and efficient execution of this law, whenever their services may be required." And what is the fate you have provided for the "good citizen," who, believing slavery to be sinful, cannot, in the fear of God, "aid and assist" in making a fellow-man a slave? Any person "who shall aid, abet, or assist" the fugitive "directly or indirectly" (cunning words) to escape from such claimant, as, for instance, refusing to join in a slave-hunt when required, shall be fined not exceeding $1,000, be imprisoned six months, and pay the claimant $1,000. I hope, Sir, you are now able to perceive that your law has a preëminence in barbarity over its predecessor. And now, Sir, please to recollect, that party discipline, aided by the influence of Messrs. Webster and Clay, and the factory and cotton interest of Boston and New York, could not procure for this atrocious law the votes of one half the members of the House of Representatives. Of two hundred and thirty-two members, only one hundred and nine dared to place their names on an enduring and shameful record, while many basely deserted their seats, fearing alike to vote either for or against it. You, Sir, following Mr. Webster's advice, "conquered your prejudices," and in company with two more Northern Whigs, one of them a native of Virginia, cast your vote for this bill of abominations. But, although you voted for the law, you do not wish your constituents to suppose you approved of it. "It will not, I trust, be inferred from any thing I have said, that I consider the law which has passed unexceptionable. There are amendments which I strongly desire to be introduced into it." What are the exceptionable features of the law, what are the amendments you desire, you refrain from specifying. But you tell us that you would have labored for these amendments "had it been possible, but every body knows that it was impracticable." You allude to the previous question, which prevented both discussion and amendments. But why, then, did you vote for an objectionable bill which could not be amended? Here, again, we have one of your unfortunate reasons. "I deem conformity to the design of the Constitution more important than the objectionable details of the bill." So, by your own confession, had there been no previous question, you would have swallowed the bill with all its objectionable details, out of reverence for the design of the Constitution, although that design neither embraced nor required a single one of those details. Did you, Sir, vote against the previous question? On this point you are silent, and the minutes afford no information; but if you did, your vote was a most remarkable aberration from your proslavery course in Congress. After the previous question had been seconded, it was moved to lay the bill on the table. Had this motion been carried, you might have introduced another bill, omitting the "objectionable details," but you voted with the slaveholders. The slaveholders then moved that the bill be read a third time. Had this been lost, there would have been a chance of correcting the "objectionable details." Again you voted with the slaveholders, and a third time, also, on the main question.
I will now, Sir, call your attention to the disastrous influence which your law has exerted on the moral sense of the community. Says Coleridge, "To dogmatize a crime, that is, to teach it as a doctrine, is itself a crime." Of this crime of dogmatizing crime, Mr. Webster, and most of our cotton politicians, and, alas! many of our fashionable, genteel divines, are guilty; nor are you innocent, Sir, who in your law require "GOOD citizens" to aid in hunting and enslaving their fellow-men.
In former years, and before Mr. Webster had undergone his metamorphosis, he thus, in a speech at New York, expressed himself in regard to the antislavery agitation at the North. "It [slavery] has arrested the religious feeling of the country; it has taken strong hold of the consciences of men. He is a rash man indeed, little conversant with human nature, and especially has he a very erroneous estimate of the character of the people of this country, who supposes that a feeling of this kind is to be trifled with or despised." This gentleman has become the rash man shadowed forth in his speech, and is trifling with and despising the religious feeling of the North. In his street speech in Boston, in favor of slave-hunting, he avowed that he was well aware that the return of fugitives "is a topic that must excite prejudices," and that the question for Massachusetts to decide was, "whether she will conquer her own prejudice." In his letter to the citizens of Newburyport, he sneeringly alludes to the "cry that there is a rule for the government of public men and private men which is superior to the Constitution," and he scornfully intimates that Mr. Horace Mann, who had objected to your law as wicked, would do well "to appeal at once, as others do, to that high authority which sits enthroned above the Constitution and the laws"; and he gives an extract from a nameless English correspondent, in which the writer remarks, "Religion is an excellent thing except in politics," a maxim exceedingly palatable to very many of our politicians. Aware that the impiety of this sentiment was not exactly suited to the meridian of Massachusetts, he says his friend undoubtedly meant "a fantastical notion of religion." Of course, he regards the religious prejudice against hunting and enslaving men as springing from a fantastic notion of religion. Yet, with a strange fatuity, he confesses that "the teaching of Christ and his Apostles is a sure guide to duty in politics, as in any other concern of life," utterly oblivious of the fact, that the "higher law," which he ridicules, was proclaimed in that very teaching. Christ taught, "Fear not them [magistrates] who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." What taught the Apostles? "We must obey God, rather than man." Such teaching it was, that gave birth to "the noble army of martyrs," and this very teaching will induce multitudes of Christians at the present day to hazard fines and imprisonment rather than obey the wicked injunctions of your law. It was this same teaching which, on the publication of your law, induced numerous ministers of Jesus Christ, and various ecclesiastical assemblies, to denounce it as wicked, and obedience to it as rebellion against God. This expression of religious sentiment alarmed both our politicians and our merchants. How could the one expect Southern votes, or the other Southern trade, if the religious people at the North refused to catch slaves? Hence arose a mighty outcry against the blending of religion with politics, and most fearful were the anathemas against the parsons who desecrated the pulpit by preaching politics, that is, preaching that people ought to obey God rather than the Fugitive Slave Act. Such men were, in the language of one of the New York commercial journals, "clerical preachers of rebellion," and their congregations were exhorted to "leave them to naked walls." But the leaven was at work, and an antidote was greatly wanted. Supply of course follows demand, and forthwith there was a sudden advent of cotton clergyman, preaching against rebellion, and cunningly confounding a conscientious, passive disobedience with forcible resistance. Their sermons, in which virtually
"The image of God was accounted as base,
And the image of Cæsar set up in its place,"
were received with mighty applause by the very men who had been striving to save the pulpit from all contaminating contact with politics, and the reverend preachers of cotton politics were elevated into patriots, and their disquisitions against the "higher law" were scattered on the wings of the commercial press broadcast over the land.[2] The theology which holds that the allegiance we owe to civil government binds the conscience to obedience to its mandates, is the same with which Shakspeare's assassin quieted his scruples when acting under the royal command,—"If a king bid a man be a villain, he is bound by the indenture of his oath to be one."
It is amusing to observe with what awful reverence our merchants and brokers regard the sanctity of human law, when it commands them to catch slaves; a reverence not always felt by them for the statute of usury when the money market is tight.
A vast deal of nonsense and impiety has been recently thrown upon the public in relation to the "higher law," by men who had political and pecuniary interests depending on the good-will of the slaveholders. The whole subject is perfectly simple and intelligible, and has been intentionally misrepresented and mystified.
Human government is indispensable to the happiness and progress of human society. Hence God, in his wisdom and benevolence, wills its existence; and in this sense, and this alone, the powers that be are ordained by him. But civil government cannot exist, if each individual may, at his pleasure, forcibly resist its injunctions. Therefore Christians are required to submit to the powers that be, whether a Nero or a slave-catching Congress. But obedience to the civil ruler often necessarily involves rebellion to God. Hence we are warned by Christ and his Apostles, and by the example of saints in all ages, in such cases, not to obey, but to submit and suffer. We are to hold fast our allegiance to Jehovah, but at the same time not take up arms to defend ourselves against the penalties imposed by the magistrate for our disobedience. Thus the Divine sovereignty and the authority of human government are both maintained. Revolution is not the abolition of human government, but a change in its form, and its lawfulness depends on circumstances. What was the "den" in which John Bunyan had his glorious vision of the Pilgrim's Progress? A prison to which he was confined for years for refusing obedience to human laws. And what excuse did this holy man make for conduct now denounced as wicked and rebellious? "I cannot obey, but I can suffer." The Quakers have from the first refused to obey the law requiring them to bear arms; yet have they never been vilified by our politicians and cotton clergymen, as rebels against the powers that be, nor sneered at for their acknowledgment of a "higher" than human law. The Lord Jesus Christ, after requiring us to love God and our neighbour, added, "There is none other commandment greater than these"; no, not even a slave-catching act of Congress, which requires us to hunt our neighbour, that he may be reduced to the condition of a beast of burden. Rarely has the religious faith of the community received so rude a shock as that which has been given it by your horrible law, and the principles advanced by its political and clerical supporters. Cruelty, oppression, and injustice are elevated into virtues, while justice, mercy, and compassion are ridiculed and vilified.
But lately, the business of catching slaves was regarded as one of the lowest grades of scoundrelism. Now, great pains are taken by our gentlemen of property and standing to ennoble it; and men of eminence in the legal profession are stooping to take the wages of iniquity, and lending themselves to consign to the horrors of American slavery men whom they know to be innocent of crime. Nay, we have seen in New York a committee of gentlemen actually raising money by voluntary contribution to furnish a slave-catcher with professional services gratis;—a free gift, not to mitigate human misery, but to aggravate the hardships of the poor and friendless a thousandfold. Can men of standing in the community thus openly espouse the cause of cruelty and oppression, and, from commercial and political views, trample upon every principle of Christian benevolence, without corrupting the moral sense of the people to the extent of their influence? When gentlemen club together to hire a lawyer to assist a slave-catcher, no wonder that the commercial press should teem with the vilest abuse of all who feel sympathy for the fugitive. One of the most malignant proslavery journals in New York is edited by your colleague and fellow-Whig, the Honorable Mr. Brooks, and his brother. I copy, Sir, for your consideration, the following article from the New York Evening Express, published during the late trial in that city of Henry Long, an alleged fugitive:—