It was a Judicial tribunal which condemned Socrates to drink the fatal hemlock, and which pushed the Saviour barefoot over the pavements of Jerusalem, bending beneath his cross. It was a judicial tribunal which, against the testimony and entreaties of her father, surrendered the fair Virginia as a slave; which arrested the teachings of the great apostle to the Gentiles, and sent him in bonds from Judea to Rome; which, in the name of the Old Religion, adjudged the saints and fathers of the Christian Church to death, in all its most dreadful forms; and which afterwards, in the name of the New Religion, enforced the tortures of the Inquisition, amidst the shrieks and agonies of its victims, while it compelled Galileo to declare, in solemn denial of the great truth he had disclosed, that the earth did not move round the sun.
It was a judicial tribunal which, in France, during the long reign of her monarchs, lent itself to be the instrument of every tyranny, as during the brief reign of terror it did not hesitate to stand forth the unpitying accessory of the unpitying guillotine. Ay, sir, it was a judicial tribunal in England, surrounded by all the forms of law, which sanctioned every despotic caprice of Henry the Eighth, from the unjust divorce of his queen, to the beheading of Sir Thomas More; which lighted the fires of persecution that glowed at Oxford and Smithfield, over the cinders of Latimer, Ridley, and John Rogers; which, after elaborate argument, upheld the fatal tyranny of ship-money against the patriotic resistance of Hampden; which, in defiance of justice and humanity, sent Sydney and Russell to the block; which persistently enforced the laws of Conformity that our Puritan Fathers persistently refused to obey; and which afterwards, with Jeffries on the bench, crimsoned the pages of English history with massacre and murder—even with the blood of innocent woman.
Ay, sir, and it was a judicial tribunal in our country, surrounded by all the forms of law, which hung witches at Salem,—which affirmed the constitutionality of the Stamp Act, while it admonished "jurors and the people" to obey,—and which now, in our day has lent its sanction to the unutterable atrocity of the Fugitive Slave Bill. C. Sumner.
CCLXIII.
SLAVERY THE MAINSPRING OF THE REBELLION.
The whole quantity of slave-owners, great and small, according to the recent census, is not more than four hundred thousand; out of whom there are not more than one hundred thousand who are interested to any considerable extent in this peculiar species of property; and yet this petty oligarchy—itself controlled by a squad still more petty—in a population of many millions, has aroused and organized this gigantic rebellion. The future historian will record that the present rebellion—notwithstanding its protracted origin, the multitudes it has enlisted, and its extensive sweep—was at last precipitated by fewer than twenty men; Mr. Everett says, by as few as ten. It is certain that thus far it has been the triumph of a minority; but of a minority moved, inspired, combined, and aggrandized by slavery.
And now this traitorous minority, putting aside all the lurking, slimy devices of conspiracy steps forth in the full panoply of war. Assuming to itself all the functions of a government, it organizes States under a common head—sends ambassadors into foreign countries—levies taxes—borrows money—issues letters of marque—and sets armies in the field, summoned from distant Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, as well as from nearer Virginia, and composed of the whole lawless population—the poor who cannot own slaves as well as the rich who own them—throughout the extensive region where, with satanic grasp, this slaveholding minority claims for itself
"—ample room and verge enough The characters of hell to trace."
Pardon the language which I employ. The words of the poet do not picture too strongly the object proposed. And now these parricidal hosts stand arrayed openly against that paternal Government to which they owed loyalty, protection, and affection Never in history did rebellion assume such a front. Call their numbers four hundred thousand or two hundred thousand—what you will—they far surpass any armed forces ever before marshalled in rebellion; they are among the largest ever marshalled in war. And all this is in the name of slavery, and for the sake of slavery, and at the bidding of slavery. The profligate favorite of the English monarch—the famous Duke of Buckingham—was not more exclusively supreme—even according to those words by which he was exposed to the judgment of his contemporaries:
"Who rules the kingdom? The king.
"Who rules the king? The Duke.
"Who rules the Duke? The Devil."