But it is not I, merely, now put to trial. Nay, it is the unalienable Rights of Humanity, it is truths self-evident. For on the back of that compliant Measure, unseen, there rides a Principle. The verdict expected of you condemns liberal institutions: all Religion but priestcraft—the abnegation of religion itself; all Rights but that to bondage—the denial of all rights. The word which fines me, puts your own purse in the hands of your worst enemies; the many-warded key which shuts me in jail, locks your lips forever—your children's lips forever. No complaint against oppression hereafter! Kidnapping will go on in silence, but at noonday, not a minister stirring. Meeting-houses will be shut; all court houses have a loaded cannon at their door, chains all round them, be stuffed with foreign soldiers inside, while commissioners swear away the life, the liberty, and even the Estate of the subjected "citizens." All Probate Judges will belong to the family of man-stealers. Faneuil Hall will be shut, or open only for a "Union Meeting," where the ruler calls together his menials to indorse some new act of injustice,—only creatures of the Government, men like the marshal's guard last June, allowed to speak words paid for by the People's coward sweat and miserable blood. The blow which smites my head will also cleave you asunder from crown to groin.
Your verdict is to vindicate Religion with Freedom of Speech, and condemn the stealing of men; or else to confirm Kidnapping and condemn Religion with Freedom of Speech. You are to choose whether you will have such men as Wendell Phillips for your advisers, or such as Benjamin F. Hallett and Benjamin R. Curtis for your masters, with the marshal's guard, for their appropriate servants. Do you think I doubt how you will choose?
Already a power of iniquity clutches at your children's throat; stabs at their life—at their soul's life. I stand between the living tyrant and his living victim; aye, betwixt him and expected victims not yet born,—your children, not mine. I have none to writhe under the successful lash which tyrants now so subtly braid therewith, one day, to scourge the flesh of well-descended men. I am to stand the champion of human Rights for generations yet unborn. It is a sad distinction! Hard duties have before been laid on me,—none so obviously demanding great powers as this. Whereto shall I look up for inspiring aid? Only to Him who gave words to the slow tongue of Moses and touched with fire Esaias' hesitating lips, and dawned into the soul of tent-makers and fishermen with such great wakening light, as shining through them, brought day to nations sitting in darkness, yet waiting for the consolation. May such Truth and Justice enable me also, to speak a testimony unto the Gentiles; He who chose the weak things, to bring to nought the mighty, may not despise such humble services as mine.
Gentlemen of the Jury, my ministry deals chiefly with the Laws of God, little with the statutes of men. My manhood has been mainly passed in studying absolute, universal truth, teaching it to men, and applying it to the various departments of life. I have little to do with courts of law. Yet I am not now altogether a stranger to the circuit court room of the United States, having been in it on five several occasions before.
1. A Polish exile,—a man of famous family, ancient and patrician before Christendom had laid eyes on America, once also of great individual wealth, a man of high rank alike acquired and inherited, once holding a high place at the court of the Czar,—became a fugitive from Russian despotism, seeking an asylum here; he came to the circuit court room to lecture on the Roman Law. I came to contribute my two mites of money, and receive his wealth of learning.
2. The next time, I came at the summons of Thomas Sims. For a creature of the slave-power had spontaneously seized that poor and friendless boy and thrust him into a dungeon, hastening to make him a slave,—a beast of burthen. He had been on his mock trial seven days, and had never seen a Judge, only a commissioner, nor a Jury; no Court but a solitary kidnapper. Some of his attendants had spoken of me as a minister not heedless of the welfare and unalienable rights of a black man fallen among a family of thieves. I went to the court house. Outside it was belted with chains. In despotic Europe I had seen no such spectacle, save once when the dull tyrant who oppressed Bavaria with his licentious flesh, in 1844 put his capital in a brief state of siege and chained the streets. The official servant of the kidnapper, club in hand, a policeman of this city, goaded to his task by Mayor Bigelow and Marshal Tukey,—men congenitally mingled in such appropriate work,—bade me "Get under the chain." I pressed it down and went over. The Judges of our own Supreme Court, they went under,—had gone out and in, beneath the chain! How poetry mingles with fact! The chain was a symbol, and until this day remaineth the same chain, untaken away in the reading of the fugitive slave bill; and when the law of Massachusetts is read, the chain is also upon the neck of that court! Within the court house was full of armed men. I found Mr. Sims in a private room, illegally, in defiance of Massachusetts law, converted into a jail to hold men charged with no crime. Ruffians mounted guard at the entrance, armed with swords, fire-arms, and bludgeons. The door was locked and doubly barred besides. Inside the watch was kept by a horrid looking fellow, without a coat, a naked cutlass in his hand, and some twenty others, their mouths nauseous with tobacco and reeking also with half-digested rum paid for by the city. In such company, I gave what consolation Religion could offer to the first man Boston ever kidnapped,—consolations which took hold only of eternity, where the servant is free from his master, for there the wicked cease from troubling. I could offer him no comfort this side the grave.
3. I visited the United States court a third time. A poor young man had been seized by the same talons which subsequently griped Sims in their poison, deadly clutch. But that time, wickedness went off hungry, defeated of its prey; "for the Lord delivered him out of their hands," and Shadrach escaped from that Babylonish furnace, heated seven times hotter than its wont: no smell of fire had passed on him. But the rescue of Shadrach was telegraphed as "treason." The innocent lightning flashed out the premeditated and legal lie,—"it is levying war!" What offence it was in that Fourth One who walked with the Hebrew children, "making their good confession," and sustained the old Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, I know not. But the modern countrymen of the African Shadrach, charged with some great crime, were haled into this court to be punished for their humanity! I came to look on these modern Angels of the Deliverance, to hear counsel of Mr. Dana, then so wise and humane, and to listen to the masterly eloquence which broke out from the great human heart of my friend, Mr. Hale, and rolled like the Mississippi, in its width, its depth, its beauty, and its continuous and unconquerable strength.
4. The fourth time, a poor man had been kidnapped, also at night, and forced into the same illegal jail. He sat in the dock—an innocent man, to be made into a beast. The metamorphosis had begun;—he was already in chains and his human heart seemed dead in him; sixty ruffians were about him, aiding in this drama, hired out of the brothels and rum-shops for a few days, the lust of kidnapping serving to vary the continual glut of those other and less brutal appetites of unbridled flesh. While that "trial" lasted, whoredom had a Sabbath day, and brawlers rested from their toil. Opposite sat the Boston Judge of Probate, and the Boston District Attorney,—the Moses and Elias of this inverted transfiguration; there sat the marshal, two "gentlemen" from Virginia, claiming that a Boston man was their beast of burthen, owing service and labor in Richmond; two "lawyers," "members of the Suffolk bar," pistols in their coats, came to support the allegation and enforce the claim. Honorable men stood up to defend him. There is one of them,—to defend me [Charles M. Ellis.] You know very well the rest of that sad story,—the mock trial of Anthony Burns lasted from May 25th till June 2d. I was here in all the acts of that Tragedy. My own life was threatened; friend and foe gave me public or anonymous warning. I sat between men who had newly sworn to kill me, my garments touching theirs. The malaria of their rum and tobacco was an offence in my face. I saw their weapons, and laughed as I looked those drunken rowdies in their coward eye. They touch me!
5. The fifth time I came here at the summons of an officer of this court,—very politely delivered, let me say it to his credit,—indicted and arrested for a "misdemeanor." I gave bail and withdrew.