The present state constitution was established in 1780. The first article of the Bill of Rights prohibited slavery by affirming the foundation truth of our republic, that "all men are born free and equal." The Supreme Court decided in 1783 that no man could hold another as property without a direct violation of that article.
In 1788 three free black citizens of Boston were kidnapped and sold into slavery in one of the French islands. An intense excitement followed. Governor Hancock took efficient measures for reclaiming the unfortunate men. The clergy of Boston petitioned the Legislature for a total prohibition of the foreign slave-trade. The Society of Friends, and the blacks generally, presented similar petitions; and the same year an act was passed prohibiting the slave-trade and granting relief to persons kidnapped or decoyed out of the Commonwealth. The fear of a burden to the state from the influx of negroes from abroad led the Legislature, in connection with this law, to prevent those who were not citizens of the state or of other states from gaining a residence.
The first case of the arrest of a fugitive slave in Massachusetts under the law of 1793 took place in Boston soon after the passage of the law. It is the case to which President Quincy alludes in his late letter against the fugitive slave law. The populace at the trial aided the slave to escape, and nothing further was done about it.
The arrest of George Latimer as a slave, in Boston, and his illegal confinement in jail, in 1842, led to the passage of the law of 1843 for the "protection of personal liberty," prohibiting state officers from arresting or detaining persons claimed as slaves, and the use of the jails of the Commonwealth for their confinement. This law was strictly in accordance with the decision of the supreme judiciary, in the case of Prigg vs. The State of Pennsylvania, that the reclaiming of fugitives was a matter exclusively belonging to the general government; yet that the state officials might, if they saw fit, carry into effect the law of Congress on the subject, "unless prohibited by state legislation."
It will be seen by the facts we have adduced that slavery in Massachusetts never had a legal existence. The ermine of the judiciary of the Puritan state has never been sullied by the admission of its detestable claims. It crept into the Commonwealth like other evils and vices, but never succeeded in clothing itself with the sanction and authority of law. It stood only upon its own execrable foundation of robbery and wrong.
With a history like this to look back upon, is it strange that the people of Massachusetts at the present day are unwilling to see their time- honored defences of personal freedom, the good old safeguards of Saxon liberty, overridden and swept away after the summary fashion of "the Fugitive Slave Bill;" that they should loathe and scorn the task which that bill imposes upon them of aiding professional slave-hunters in seizing, fettering, and consigning to bondage men and women accused only of that which commends them to esteem and sympathy, love of liberty and hatred of slavery; that they cannot at once adjust themselves to "constitutional duties" which in South Carolina and Georgia are reserved for trained bloodhounds? Surely, in view of what Massachusetts has been, and her strong bias in favor of human freedom, derived from her great- hearted founders, it is to be hoped that the Executive and Cabinet at Washington will grant her some little respite, some space for turning, some opportunity for conquering her prejudices, before letting loose the dogs of war upon her. Let them give her time, and treat with forbearance her hesitation, qualms of conscience, and wounded pride. Her people, indeed, are awkward in the work of slave-catching, and, it would seem, rendered but indifferent service in a late hunt in Boston. Whether they would do better under the surveillance of the army and navy of the United States is a question which we leave with the President and his Secretary of State. General Putnam once undertook to drill a company of Quakers, and instruct them, by force of arms, in the art and mystery of fighting; but not a single pair of drab-colored breeches moved at his "forward march;" not a broad beaver wheeled at his word of command; no hand unclosed to receive a proffered musket. Patriotic appeal, hard swearing, and prick of bayonet had no effect upon these impracticable raw recruits; and the stout general gave them up in despair. We are inclined to believe that any attempt on the part of the Commander-in-chief of our army and navy to convert the good people of Massachusetts into expert slave-catchers, under the discipline of West Point and Norfolk, would prove as idle an experiment as that of General Putnam upon the Quakers.
THOMAS CARLYLE ON THE SLAVE-QUESTION.
[1846.]
A LATE number of Fraser's Magazine contains an article bearing the unmistakable impress of the Anglo-German peculiarities of Thomas Carlyle, entitled, 'An Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question', which would be interesting as a literary curiosity were it not in spirit and tendency so unspeakably wicked as to excite in every rightminded reader a feeling of amazement and disgust. With a hard, brutal audacity, a blasphemous irreverence, and a sneering mockery which would do honor to the devil of Faust, it takes issue with the moral sense of mankind and the precepts of Christianity. Having ascertained that the exports of sugar and spices from the West Indies have diminished since emancipation,—and that the negroes, having worked, as they believed, quite long enough without wages, now refuse to work for the planters without higher pay than the latter, with the thriftless and evil habits of slavery still clinging to them, can afford to give,—the author considers himself justified in denouncing negro emancipation as one of the "shams" which he was specially sent into this world to belabor. Had he confned himself to simple abuse and caricature of the self-denying and Christian abolitionists of England—"the broad-brimmed philanthropists of Exeter Hall"—there would have been small occasion for noticing his splenetic and discreditable production. Doubtless there is a cant of philanthropy —the alloy of human frailty and folly—in the most righteous reforms, which is a fair subject for the indignant sarcasm of a professed hater of shows and falsities. Whatever is hollow and hypocritical in politics, morals, or religion, comes very properly within the scope of his mockery, and we bid him Godspeed in plying his satirical lash upon it. Impostures and frauds of all kinds deserve nothing better than detection and exposure. Let him blow them up to his heart's content, as Daniel did the image of Bell and the Dragon.
But our author, in this matter of negro slavery, has undertaken to apply his explosive pitch and rosin, not to the affectation of humanity, but to humanity itself. He mocks at pity, scoffs at all who seek to lessen the amount of pain and suffering, sneers at and denies the most sacred rights, and mercilessly consigns an entire class of the children of his Heavenly Father to the doom of compulsory servitude. He vituperates the poor black man with a coarse brutality which would do credit to a Mississippi slave-driver, or a renegade Yankee dealer in human cattle on the banks of the Potomac. His rhetoric has a flavor of the slave-pen and auction-block, vulgar, unmanly, indecent, a scandalous outrage upon good taste and refined feeling, which at once degrades the author and insults his readers.