Slavery: letters and speeches

by Horace Mann

Fellow-Citizens;

We are assembled on a great occasion and for a great purpose. The election of a member of Congress, indeed, is not an extraordinary event; but it is extraordinary that principles of the most vital importance to the honor of Massachusetts, and to the cause of human liberty throughout the world, should be involved in a local election. Such, however, is now the fact.

Gentlemen, the assertion and the recognition of the rights of man have made great progress among the nations of Europe within the recollection of many who are now before me. Notwithstanding the partition of Poland by allied robbers, and the obliteration of that kingdom from the map of Europe; notwithstanding Hungarian subjugation to Austrian despotism, and many other atrocious crimes against humanity, such as nations only can commit; for they are too vast and monstrous to be perpetrated by any individual,—I say, notwithstanding these facts, the great fabric of human liberty has been rising in Europe, while the solid structures of despotism have been disintegrating and making ready for their fall.

But truth compels me to acknowledge that, during the last three quarters of a century, our course, in this country, has been downward. While among the other nations of Christendom the altar-fires of liberty have been kindling and burning with a brighter flame, ours have been waning. At the foundation of our government an institution existed amongst us utterly irreconcilable with the fundamental principles of the government itself. But it was then limited in its extent, and its spirit nowhere existed in great intensity. Even those who cherished it most were ashamed of it; and in those provisions of the constitution which were designed for its temporary protection, a common regard for decency forbade the mention of its name. Fatally to our own peace and honor, that which was then regarded as temporary and local, now threatens to be abiding and universal. From speaking of slavery with hushed breath, its bold abettors now shout forth its praises. From providing for the extermination of the African slave trade, they have converted the slave states into another Africa, this side the tropics; and by the successful robbery of a neighboring republic, they seek to create a new America, so that the slave trade, once abolished and declared piracy, may be revived and legalized. The Middle Passage is to be transferred from the ocean to the land. Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, &c., are to be the Gold Coast, Benin, and the Galinas; the place of supply, the place of demand, and the highways of commerce between them are to be within our own borders and protected by the American flag; and that horrid traffic which all the leading nations of Christendom united in declaring to be a felony punishable with death, is now to be maintained and defended amongst ourselves, under penalty of death and a dissolution of the Union.

Nor does it suffice that the tide of slavery should rise and overflow the vast and uninhabited regions of the west. It surges up against the free states themselves, and all the dikes and barriers of that constitutional law which we have been enacting for seventy-five years, cannot stay its flood. We thought that Massachusetts was the impregnable citadel of freedom; but unconstitutional and inhuman laws, dictated by slaveholders, are now enforced amongst us, and at our very doors; and our services are commanded for their execution.

Thank God, there is a part of our people who, while they suffer, resist. Only a portion amongst us have reached that lowest depth of degradation, where they surrender, not their limbs only, but their wills, to the hateful service of their masters. Slavery has done its perfect work only when the soul is enslaved. I rejoice to believe that we have not only seven thousand in this our Massachusetts Israel, who have not bowed the knee to Baal, but seven hundred thousand; and recent events foretell not only an increasing number, but a more determined opposition.

Why is it, fellow-citizens, that Massachusetts stands first, or among the first, in 1851, in her hostility to the Fugitive Slave law? I answer, for the very reason that she stood first in her hostility to the encroachments of the British crown in 1776. And in less than seventy-five years from this time, those who oppose and those who defend this inhuman law, will stand, historically, as wide asunder, and will share as high an honor or suffer as deep an ignominy, as is now awarded to the lovers of freedom and the minions of power who lived at the era of the revolution. Let all young men beware not to be seduced by any temptations of immediate profit or mistaken honor, to lift a hand in defence of this law. If they do, then, before they have lived out half their lives, they will be as ready as old Cranmer to thrust the offending member into the flames, and to say with him, “This hand, this wicked hand, has offended.”

Gentlemen, we in Massachusetts are a Union-loving, and law-abiding people. Mr. Webster and his “retainers” may spare their breath in exhorting us to abide by the Union. Such a work, in this commonwealth, is a work of supererogation. He knows, and they know, that the number of disunionists in this state can be counted on a man’s fingers and toes. Whatever influence they exert must flow from their zeal, their talents, and their private character; for they derive none from numerical force. Were they all to settle in one of our small towns, they would be out-voted by its inhabitants. I regard these ever-repeated appeals made to Massachusetts men and to New England men to stand by the Union, as not merely obtrusive, but as affrontive and insulting. Besides, when a man undertakes the mission of going round the country, preaching honesty, or temperance, or chastity, he provokes the inquiry whether he is more honest, temperate, or continent than those whom he exhorts. If the union of these states now is, or has ever been verging towards a point of danger, it is solely and only because ambitious men and mercenary men at the north have given it that direction by recognizing southern threats and bravadoes as realities, and thus encouraging them. Let the greatest coward see that his threats are acknowledged as verities, and he will adopt the cheap mode of threatening instead of the hazardous one of acting. Could the Chinese have frightened away the British fleet by their battery of wooden cannon, having the middle of the ends painted black for a muzzle, they would have been fools to incur the expense of brass or iron. But John Bull did not care whether the cannon were of wood or of metal, and at his first fire the Celestials scampered. But here, when a few men in a few states pointed their wooden guns at us, Mr. Webster, General Cass, and others, for their own ambitious purposes, cried out that the Union was in danger. I say, then, if the union of these states ever has been in any proximity to danger, it was not from menaces uttered by the south, but from northern indorsement of them. If northern leaders had dishonored instead of indorsing this spurious paper, it never would have got into circulation.

We are not only Union-loving men, but, as I said before, we are law-abiding men. Had this not been so, not all the fleets and armies in the world could have carried Thomas Sims into bondage. So intimately blended is the reverence for law with the very soul of our people, that if you could convince them that a statute has legal force and is binding upon the conscience, I verily believe our juries would give a verdict in favor of Shylock, though the pound of flesh which he claimed were to be carved from their own bosoms. This side of a just cause for revolution, they will yield submission to all laws enacted by the government, with one single exception. The exception I mean, embraces those laws of men which are clearly contrary to the law of God. And I trust the time is not now, and never will be, when the children of the Puritans will obey any commandment of human origin if it conflicts with a divine command, though they have to lie down in lions’ dens or walk through furnace fires, as the penalty of disobedience.

But with this sentiment of reverence for law is another sentiment, which is its proper attendant and brother,—I mean a desire and a determination to know what that is which is called law; what it is that claims this prerogative of controlling the will and challenging the conscience. It is in this spirit that they have discussed and mean to discuss the Fugitive Slave law, and to bring it, Protestant fashion, to the test of individual judgment and conscience.