$225 REWARD.—TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS will be given for negro LOTT, EITHER
DEAD OR ALIVE; and TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS FOR BOB'S HEAD, delivered to
the subscriber in the town of Wilmington.
BENJAMIN HALLET.
March 2nd, 1853.
There is another evidence of a want of happiness among the slaves, which, though silent and unheard, challenges contradiction: I mean the annual escape of from one to two thousand into Canada, in spite not only of the natural difficulties and privations of the journey, but also of the fearful dread of the consequences of re-capture. Doubtless some of these may be fleeing from the dread of just punishment for offences against the law, but none can doubt that many more are endeavouring to escape from what they feel to be cruelty, injustice, and oppression.
I do not wish to pander to a morbid appetite for horrors by gathering together under one view all the various tales of woe and misery which I have heard of, known, or seen. I think I have said enough to prove to any unprejudiced person that such things do and must ever exist under the institution of slavery; and that, although the statements of rabid abolitionists are often the most unwarranted exaggerations, the all but total denial of their occurrence by the slave-owners is also not correct. The conviction forced upon my own mind, after much thought and inquiry on this most interesting topic is, that there are many dark clouds of cruelty in a sky which is bright with much of the truest and kindest sympathy for the poor slave.
I now propose to take a short review of the progress and real state of slavery, and I will commence by giving in extenso an enactment which materially affects the negro, and, as I have before observed, has more than once threatened the Republic with disunion:—
Section 2.—Privileges of Citizens.—Clause 3. "No person held to service or labour in one state under the laws thereof, escaping to another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due."
Of course the word "slave" would have read strangely among a community who set themselves up as the champions of the "equal rights of man;" but it is clear that, according to this clause in the constitution which binds the Republic together, every free state is compelled to assist in the recapture of a fugitive slave.