"Gentlemen, I am a clergyman and a man of peace; I love peace. But there is a means, and there is an end; Liberty is the end, and sometimes peace is not the means towards it. [Applause.] Now, I want to ask you what you are going to do. [A voice—'shoot, shoot.'] There are ways of managing this matter without shooting anybody. Be sure that these men who have kidnapped a man in Boston, are cowards, every mother's son of them; and if we stand up there resolutely, and declare that this man shall not go out of the city of Boston, without shooting a gun—[cries of 'that's it,' and great applause,]—then he won't go back. Now, I am going to propose that when you adjourn, it be to meet at Court Square, to-morrow morning at nine o'clock. As many as are in favor of that motion will raise their hands. [A large number of hands were raised, but many voices cried out, 'Let's go to-night,' 'let's pay a visit to the slave-catchers at the Revere House,' etc. 'Put that question.'] Do you propose to go to the Revere House to-night, then show your hands. [Some hands were held up.] It is not a vote. We shall meet at Court Square, at nine o'clock to-morrow morning."
On the following Sunday, May 28, in place of the usual Scripture passages, I extemporized the following "Lesson for the Day," which on Monday appeared in the newspapers:—
"Since last we came together, there has been a man stolen in the city of our fathers. It is not the first; it may not be the last. He is now in the great slave-pen in the city of Boston. He is there against the law of the Commonwealth, which, if I am rightly informed, in such cases prohibits the use of State edifices as United States jails."
"A man has been killed by violence. Some say he was killed by his own coadjutors: I can easily believe it; there is evidence enough that they were greatly frightened. They were not United States soldiers, but volunteers from the streets of Boston, who, for their pay, went into the Court House to assist in kidnapping a brother man. They were so cowardly that they could not use the simple cutlasses they had in their hands, but smote right and left, like ignorant and frightened ruffians as they are. They may have slain their brother or not—I cannot tell."
"Why is Boston in this confusion to-day? The fugitive slave bill Commissioner has just now been sowing the wind, that we may reap the whirlwind. The old fugitive slave bill Commissioner stands back; he has gone to look after his 'personal popularity.' But when Commissioner Curtis does not dare appear in this matter, another man comes forward, and for the first time seeks to kidnap his man also in the city of Boston."
"But he has sown the wind, and we are reaping the whirlwind. All this confusion is his work. He knew he was stealing a Man born with the same unalienable right to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' as himself. He knew the slaveholders had no more right to Anthony Burns than to his own daughter. He knew the consequences of stealing a man. He knew that there are men in Boston who have not yet conquered their prejudices—men who respect the Higher Law of God. He knew there would be a meeting at Faneuil Hall, gatherings in the streets. He knew there would be violence."
"Edward Greeley Loring, Judge of Probate for the County of Suffolk, in the State of Massachusetts, fugitive slave bill Commissioner of the United States, before these citizens of Boston, on Ascension Sunday, assembled to worship God, I charge you with the death of that man who was killed on last Friday night. He was your fellow-servant in kidnapping. He dies at your hand. You fired the shot which makes his wife a widow, his child an orphan. I charge you with the peril of twelve men, arrested for murder, and on trial for their lives. I charge you with filling the Court House with one hundred and eighty-four hired ruffians of the United States, and alarming not only this city for her liberties that are in peril, but stirring up the whole Commonwealth of Massachusetts with indignation, which no man knows how to stop—which no man can stop. You have done it all!"[221]
June 4th, I preached "of the New Crime against Humanity," and said:—
"Wednesday, the 24th of May, the city was all calm and still. The poor black man was at work with one of his own nation, earning an honest livelihood. A Judge of Probate, Boston born and Boston bred, a man in easy circumstances, a Professor in Harvard College, was sitting in his office, and with a single spurt of his pen he dashes off the liberty of a man—a citizen of Massachusetts. He kidnaps a man endowed by his Creator with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He leaves the writ with the Marshal, and goes home to his family, caresses his children, and enjoys his cigar. The frivolous smoke curls round his frivolous head, and at length he lays him down to sleep, and, I suppose, such dreams as haunt such heads. But when he wakes next morn, all the winds of indignation, wrath, and honest scorn, are let loose. Before night, they are blowing all over this commonwealth—ay, before another night they have gone to the Mississippi, and wherever the lightning messenger can tell the tale. So have I read in an old mediæval legend that one summer afternoon, there came up a 'shape, all hot from Tartarus,' from hell below, but garmented and garbed to represent a civil-suited man, masked with humanity. He walked quiet and decorous through Milan's stately streets, and scattered from his hand an invisible dust. It touched the walls; it lay on the streets; it ascended to the cross on the minster's utmost top. It went down to the beggar's den. Peacefully he walked through the streets, vanished and went home. But the next morning, the pestilence was in Milan, and ere a week had sped half her population were in their graves; and half the other half, crying that hell was clutching at their hearts, fled from the reeking City of the Plague!"