Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 3 (of 3)

by Theodore Parker

Of old time the Roman statute commanded the Christians to sacrifice to Jupiter; they deemed it the highest sin to do so, but it was their official business as Roman citizens. Some of them were true to their natural duty as men, and took the same cross Jesus had borne before them; Peter and John had said at their outset to the authorities—"Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye." The Emperor once made it the official business of every citizen to deliver up the Christians. But God made it no man's duty. Nay, it was each man's duty to help them. In such cases what shall a man do? You know what we think of men who comply basely, and save their life with the loss of their soul. You know how the Christian world honors the saints and martyrs, who laid down their lives for the sake of truth and right; a handful of their dust, which was quieted of its trouble by the headsman's axe seventeen hundred years ago, and is now gathered from the catacombs of Saint Agnes at Rome—why it is enough to consecrate half of the Catholic churches in New England. As I have stood among their graves, have handled the instruments with which they tasted of bitter death, and crumbled their bones in my hands,—I keep their relics still with reverend awe—I have thought there was a little difference between their religion, and the pale decency that haunts the churches of our time, and is afraid lest it lose its dividends, or its respectability, or hurt its usefulness, which is in no danger.

Do I speak of martyrs for conscience' sake? To-day is St. Maurice's day, consecrated to him and the "Thebæan legion." Maurice appears to have been a military tribune in the Christian legion, levied in the Thebais, a part of Egypt. In the latter part of the third century this legion was at Octodurum, near the little village of Martigni, in Valais, a Swiss Canton, under the command of Maximian, the associate emperor, just then named Herculeus, going to fight the Bagaudæ. The legion was ordered to sacrifice to the Gods after the heathen fashion. The soldiers refused; every tenth man was hewn down by Maximian's command. They would not submit, and so the whole legion, as the Catholic story tells us, perished there on the 22d of September, fifteen hundred and fifty-three years ago this day. Perhaps the account is not true; it is probable that the number of martyrs is much exaggerated, for six thousand soldiers would not stand still and be slaughtered without striking a blow. But the fact that the Catholic church sets apart one day in the calendar to honor this alleged heroism, shows the value men put on fidelity to conscience in such cases.

Last winter a bill for the capture of fugitive slaves was introduced into the Senate of the United States of America; the Senator who so ably represented the opinions and wishes of the controlling men of this city, proposed to support that bill, "with all its provisions to the fullest extent;" that bill, with various alterations, some for the better, others for the worse, has become a law—it received the vote of the Representative from Boston, who was not sent there, I hope, for the purpose of voting for it. That statute allows the slaveholder, or his agent, to come here, and by summary process seize a fugitive slave, and, without the formality of a trial by jury, to carry him back to eternal bondage. The statute makes it the official business of certain magistrates to aid in enslaving a man; it empowers them to call out force enough to overcome any resistance which may be offered, to summon the bystanders to aid in that work. It provides a punishment for any one who shall aid and abet, directly or indirectly, and harbor or conceal the man who is seeking to maintain his natural and unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He may be fined a thousand dollars, imprisoned six months, and be liable to a civil action for a thousand dollars more!

This statute is not to be laid to the charge of the slaveholders of the South alone; its most effective supporters are northern men; Boston is more to be blamed for it than Charleston or Savannah, for nearly a thousand persons of this city and neighborhood, most of them men of influence through money if by no other means, addressed a letter of thanks to the distinguished man who had volunteered to support that infamous bill, telling him that he had "convinced the understanding and touched the conscience of the nation." A man falls low when he consents to be a slave, and is spurned for his lack of manhood; to consent to be a catcher of fugitive slaves is to fall lower yet; but to consent to be the defender of a slave-catcher—it is seldom that human nature is base enough for that. But such examples are found in this city! This is now the law of the land. It is the official business of judges, commissioners and marshals, as magistrates, to execute the statute and deliver a fugitive up to slavery; it is your official business and mine, as citizens, when legally summoned, to aid in capturing the man. Does the command make it any man's duty? The natural duty to keep the law of God overrides the obligation to observe any human statute, and continually commands us to love a man and not hate him, to do him justice, and not injustice, to allow him his natural rights not alienated by himself; yes, to defend him in them, not only by all means legal, but by all means moral.

Let us look a little at our duty under this statute. If a man falls into the water and is in danger of drowning, it is the natural duty of the bystanders to aid in pulling him out, even at the risk of wetting their garments. We should think a man a coward who could swim, and would not save a drowning girl for fear of spoiling his coat. He would be indictable at common law. If a troop of wolves or tigers were about to seize a man, and devour him, and you and I could help him, it would be our duty to do so, even to peril our own limbs and life for that purpose. If a man undertakes to murder or steal a man, it is the duty of the bystanders to help their brother, who is in peril, against wrong from the two-legged man, as much as against the four-legged beast. But suppose the invader who seizes the man is an officer of the United States, has a commission in his pocket, a warrant for his deed in his hand, and seizes as a slave a man who has done nothing to alienate his natural rights—does that give him any more natural right to enslave a man than he had before? Can any piece of parchment make right wrong, and wrong right?

The fugitive has been a slave before: does the wrong you committed yesterday, give you a natural right to commit wrong afresh and continually? Because you enslaved this man's father, have you a natural right to enslave his child? The same right you would have to murder a man because you butchered his father first. The right to murder is as much transmissible by inheritance as the right to enslave! It is plain to me that it is the natural duty of citizens to rescue every fugitive slave from the hands of the marshal who essays to return him to bondage; to do it peaceably if they can, forcibly if they must, but by all means to do it. Will you stand by and see your countrymen, your fellow-citizens of Boston, sent off to slavery by some commissioner? Shall I see my own parishioners taken from under my eyes and carried back to bondage, by a man whose constitutional business it is to work wickedness by statute? Shall I never lift an arm to protect him? When I consent to that, you may call me a hireling shepherd, an infidel, a wolf in sheep's clothing, even a defender of slave-catching if you will; and I will confess I was a poor dumb dog, barking always at the moon, but silent as the moon when the murderer came near.

I am not a man who loves violence. I respect the sacredness of human life. But this I say, solemnly, that I will do all in my power to rescue any fugitive slave from the hands of any officer who attempts to return him to bondage. I will resist him as gently as I know how, but with such strength as I can command; I will ring the bells, and alarm the town; I will serve as head, as foot, or as hand to any body of serious and earnest men, who will go with me, with no weapons but their hands, in this work. I will do it as readily as I would lift a man out of the water, or pluck him from the teeth of a wolf, or snatch him from the hands of a murderer. What is a fine of a thousand dollars, and jailing for six months, to the liberty of a man? My money perish with me, if it stand between me and the eternal law of God. I trust there are manly men enough in this house to secure the freedom of every fugitive slave in Boston, without breaking a limb or rending a garment.

One thing more I think is very plain, that the fugitive has the same natural right to defend himself against the slave-catcher, or his constitutional tool, that he has against a murderer or a wolf. The man who attacks me to reduce me to slavery, in that moment of attack alienates his right to life, and if I were the fugitive, and could escape in no other way, I would kill him with as little compunction as I would drive a mosquito from my face. It is high time this was said. What grasshoppers we are before the statute of men! what Goliaths against the law of God! What capitalist heeds your statute of usury when he can get illegal interest? How many banks are content with six per cent. when money is scarce? Did you never hear of a merchant evading the duties of the custom-house? When a man's liberty is concerned, we must keep the law, must we? betray the wanderer, and expose the outcast?[13]

In the same manner the natural duty of a man overrides all the special obligations which a man takes on himself as a magistrate by his official oath. Our theory of office is this: The man is sunk in the magistrate; he is un homme couvert; his individual manhood is covered up and extinguished by his official cap; he is no longer a man, but a mere president, general, governor, representative, sheriff, juror, or constable; he is absolved from all allegiance to God's law of the universe when it conflicts with man's law of the land; his official business as a magistrate supersedes his natural duty as a man. In virtue of this theory, President Polk, and his coadjutors in Congress and out of it, with malice aforethought and intent to rob and to kill, did officially invade Mexico, and therein "slay, kill, and murder" some thousands of men, as well Americans as Mexicans. This is thought right because he did it officially. But the fact that he and they were magistrates, doing official business, did not make the killing any the less a wrong than if he and they had been private men, with General Lopez and not General Taylor to head or back them. The official killing of a man who has not alienated his right to life, is just as much a violation of the law of God, and the natural duty of a man, as the unofficial killing of such a person. Because you and I and some other foolish people put a man in a high office, and get him to take an oath, does that, all at once, invest him with a natural right to kill anybody he sees fit; to kill an innocent Mexican? All his natural rights he had before, and it would be difficult to ascertain where the people could find the right to authorize him to do a wrong. A man does not escape from the jurisdiction of natural law and the dominion of God by enlisting in the army, or by taking the oath of the President; for justice, the law paramount of the universe, extends over armies and nations.

A little while ago a murderer was hanged in Boston, by the Sheriff of Suffolk county, at the command of the Governor and Council of Massachusetts, by the aid of certain persons called grand and petit jurors, all of them acting in their official capacity, and doing the official business they had sworn to do. If it be a wrong thing to hang a man, or to take his life except in self-defence, and while in imminent peril, then it is not any less a wrong because men do it in their official character, in compliance with their oath. I am speaking of absolute wrong, not merely what is wrong relatively to the man's own judgment, for I doubt not that all those officers were entirely conscientious in what they did, and therefore no blame rests on them. But if a man believes it wrong to take human life deliberately, except in the cases named, then I do not see how, with a good conscience, he can be partaker in the death of any man, notwithstanding his official oath.