"Two fugitive cases are now before our courts; one that of the negro Henry Long, and the other that of three white Frenchmen, under the extradition treaty with France. The negro's case makes a great deal of noise, because he is black; the three white Frenchmen are hardly heard of. The three white French people pay their own counsel: they may have committed a robbery in Paris, or may not; are perhaps innocent, though possibly guilty; but here they are on trial, with no chance of a trial before a jury! If they are sent back, and are convicted, they go to the galleys, and are slaves for life. The negro, Henry Long, lucky fellow for being black! lives in clover here, and has one of the best speakers in the city, on the best fee, interests all the Abolitionists in all quarters, who contribute money freely for his defence, and if he is returned, leaves here canonized as a martyr, and goes back to the condition he was born in, to fatten on hog and hominy, better fed and better clothed than nine tenths of the farm laborers in Great Britain. Another consideration strikes us, and that is, the cost of defending Long will buy his freedom three times over. The very fee of his counsel would purchase his freedom. But to buy him and pay for him, not steal him, would leave no room for agitation. And where does this money come from, that cares for Long and neglects the three Frenchmen? From England, in the main, we believe. The Abolitionists here do not contribute it."
It would be difficult to find in the Satanic press a more clumsy piece of malignant falsehood. We have here, from the same pen, and in the same article, the assertions, that the Abolitionists, in all quarters, we are assured, "contribute money freely for his defence"; and then the money, it is believed, comes mainly from England. "The Abolitionists here do not contribute it." To contribute money for the legal defence of a fugitive is stealing him. The cost of defending Long amounted to three times the price that would be asked for him. Long, after his return, sold in Richmond for $750; of course his defence cost $2,250. To whom, and for what, was this money paid? Long could not be bought in New York, all advances for the purpose being peremptorily repulsed. His counsel's fee was $300, being all contributed in New York, and about $100 of it being raised by the free colored people. While $300 were thus raised to give Long the chance of a legal defence, gentlemen of the New York Union Safety Committee, of which your colleague has the honor of being a member, contributed $500 to aid the slave-catcher in reducing to bondage a man unaccused of crime!
I am inclined to believe, Sir, that you have little cause to congratulate yourself, that, in voting for the Fugitive Slave Law, you have advanced the cause of truth, justice, humanity, or religion.
A refusal to obey your wicked law has been artfully represented as a determination to resist its execution. Very few of our white population have intimated the most distant intention of resorting to illegal violence. Very many ecclesiastical bodies have denounced your law as so iniquitous, that they could not in conscience obey it; but I challenge you to point to a single instance in which such a body has recommended forcible resistance. To the vast accumulation of impiety uttered in support of your law has been added a fiendish ridicule of the benevolent and Christian feeling arrayed against it. It is true, that some of our free blacks and fugitives have declared, that they would, at the hazard of their lives, defend themselves against the kidnapper. Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of such a determination, be assured it will tax your logical powers to the utmost to prove that God has conferred the right of self-defence exclusively upon white men. The slave is a prisoner of war, and instead of being protected by law, he is subjected by it to every conceivable outrage. When murdered, his owner seeks in the courts damages at the hands of the murderer, as he would for the death of his horse. For no possible injury committed on his person, either by his owner or others, can he receive compensation, although the law may profess to punish cruelty to him as to other animals. Now it has never been regarded as immoral, by those who admit the right of self-defence, for a prisoner of war to effect his escape by slaying his guard. All this, I know, will horrify a certain class of our divines and politicians. But let them be patient. I am not laying down a doctrine, but stating facts, which they may disprove if they can. Let them remember, that all the slavery which they delight to find in the Bible was the slavery of white men, and that the Roman slaves in the time of Christ, whose bondage, we are told, he and his Apostles approved, were held by the right of war. White Americans have been held as slaves by the same holy and Scriptural tenure. Let us, then, inquire how the escape and resistance of white slaves have heretofore been regarded. In 1535, the white slaves in Tunis alone amounted to twenty thousand. Cervantes, who had himself been a slave in Algiers, says in his writings, "For liberty we ought to risk life itself; slavery being the greatest evil that can fall to the lot of man." Acting upon this precept, he himself, while a slave, planned a general insurrection of the slaves. Yet Cervantes was recognized as a faithful son of the Church, and the license prefixed to his works declares they contain nothing contrary to the Christian religion. The Annual Register for 1763 announces, that, "last month, the Christian slaves at Algiers, to the number of four thousand, rose and killed their guards, and massacred all who came in their way." The insurrection was suppressed, but no one in Europe denounced the insurgents as bloodthirsty wretches, nor regarded their effort as an impious and anti-Christian rebellion against the powers ordained of God. In the reign of Elizabeth, one John Fox, a slave on the Barbary coast, slew his master, and, effecting his escape with a number of his fellow-slaves, arrived in England. The queen, instead of looking upon him as a murderer, testified her admiration of his exploit by allowing him a pension.[3]
Washington Madison performed a similar exploit on board an American coast slaver, and arrived, with a large number of his fellow-slaves, in the British West Indies. Mr. Webster, then Secretary of State, officially demanded of the British government the surrender of this heroic man as a MURDERER.
In 1793, there were one hundred and fifteen American slaves in Algiers, held by as perfect and Scriptural a tenure as any slave is now held in any part of our wide republic. Had one of these slaves made his escape by killing his Algerine master, would any of our patriotic divines, would any gentleman of the "New York Union Committee of Safety," would even Mr. Webster himself, have pronounced him a murderer? Had the captain of a British ship favored his escape, and given him a passage to Boston, would your colleague, the Honorable Mr. Brooks, have accused him of slave-stealing? Is it not possible, Sir, that, with very many of our casuists and moralists, questions of conscience are decided according to the tincture of a skin?
I will now ask your attention to some of the political consequences resulting from the late measures in which you rejoice, and for which you voted. No sooner had Congress made the required concessions to the slave power, than the advocates of those measures claimed the glory of having given peace to the country, and perpetuity to the Union. Mr. Webster, as one of the chief agents in this blessed consummation, received the congratulations of a crowd in Washington. In his reply he observed,—"Truly, gentlemen, the last two days have been great days. A work has been accomplished which dissipates doubts and alarms, puts an end to angry controversies, fortifies the Constitution of the country, and strengthens the bond of the Union.
'Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer;....
And all the clouds that lowered upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.'"
The glorious summer anticipated by the orator proved cold and brief, and if the lowering clouds were indeed buried in the ocean, the sea has given up its dead. Never before, since the organization of the government, has such a tempest of indignation swept over the land. Never before, in a single instance, has there been manifested throughout the religious portion of the community, of all creeds and names, such a settled determination in the fear of God to withhold obedience to a law of the land. The sentiments of the great mass of the people of the free States, exclusive of the commercial cities, are briefly but emphatically embodied in a resolution of the Common Council of Chicago, viz.:—"The Fugitive Slave Act recently passed by Congress is revolting to our moral sense, and an outrage on our feelings of justice and humanity, because it disregards all the securities which the Constitution and laws have thrown around personal liberty, and its direct tendency is to alienate the people from their love and reverence for the government and institutions of our country."
How far the clouds which hovered over our house have been dissipated, let the recent rout of Mr. Webster's party in Massachusetts testify. Let his own declaration, a month after the peace measures were adopted, that the Union was passing through a fiery trial, testify.[4] How far the work of the two days has fortified the Constitution, let the recent law of Vermont, denounced as an utter nullification of the Constitution, because it rescues the alleged fugitive from the hands of the commissioner, and gives him a jury trial before a State court, testify. When rumors were rife that Mr. Webster intended to repudiate his own thunder, the Wilmot Proviso, the New York Herald, the chief Northern organ of the slaveholders, promised that, if the Senator would indeed pursue a course so patriotic, a grateful country would, at the next election, place him in the Presidential chair. But scarcely had the acts advocated by Mr. Webster been consummated, than the Herald, with sardonic malice, announces,—"The predictions of Mr. Clay, that the Compromise Bill would speedily conciliate all parties, and restore the era of good feeling, were exactly the reverse of the actual consequences. Mr. Webster has been cast overboard in Massachusetts. General Cass has been virtually condemned in Michigan. Mr. Dickinson, the President, and his cabinet, have been routed in New York. Mr. Phelps has been superseded in Vermont. Whilst in Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, the Free-Soilers have carried off the booty." And he winds up with declaring, that the next President "can't be Fillmore nor Webster."