The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act Part 2

In the same debate, Mr. Maxson, of Allegheny, said:--"All laws, whether Const.i.tutions or statutes, that invade human rights, are null. A community has no more power to strike down the rights of man by Const.i.tutions, than by any other means. Do those who give us awfully solemn lessons about the inviolability of compacts, mean that one man is bound to rob another because he has _agreed_ to? In this age of schools, of churches and of Bibles, do they mean to teach us that an agreement to rob men of their rights, in whatever solemn form that agreement may be written out, is binding? Has the morality of the nineteenth century culminated in _this_, that a mere compact can convert vice into virtue? These advocates of the rightfulness of robbery, because it has been _agreed_, to, and that agreement has been _written down_, have come too late upon the stage, by more than two hundred years. Where does the proud Empire State wish to be recorded in that great history, which is being so rapidly filled out with the records of this "irrepressible conflict"? For myself, a humble citizen of the State, I ask no prouder record for her than that, in the year 1860, she enacted that _the moment a man sets foot on her soil, he is free, against the world_!"

Wendell Phillips, one of earth's bravest and best, made a speech at Worcester, 1851, from which I make the following extract:--"Mr.

Mann, Mr. Giddings, and other leaders of the Free Soil party, are ready to go to the death against the Fugitive Slave Law. It never should be enforced, they say. It robs men of the jury trial, it robs them of _habeas corpus_, and forty other things. This is a very good position. But how much comfort would it have been to Ellen Crafts, if she had been sent back to Macon, to know that it had been done with a scrupulous observance of all the forms of _habeas corpus_ and jury trial? When she got back, some excellent friend might have said to her, 'My dear Ellen, you had the blessed privilege of _habeas corpus_ and jury trial. What are you grieving about? You were sent back according to law and the Const.i.tution. What could you want more?' From the statements of our Free Soil friends, you would suppose that the _habeas corpus_ was the great safeguard of a slave's freedom; that it covered him as with an angel's wing. But suppose _habeas corpus_ and jury trial granted, what then? Is any man to be even _so_ surrendered, with our consent? No slave shall be sent back--except by _habeas corpus_. Stop half short of that! No slave shall be sent back!"

Rev. A.D. Mayo, of Albany, is one of those clergymen who believe that a religious teacher has something to do with questions affecting public morality; and his preaching is eloquent, because he is fearlessly obedient to his own convictions. In a Sermon on the Fugitive Slave Bill, he said:--"Remember that despotism has no natural rights on earth that any man is bound to respect. I know there is no political party, no Christian sect, no Northern State, as a whole, yet fully up to this. But the Christian sentiment of the country will finally bring us all to the same conclusion."

NO SLAVE HUNT IN OUR BORDERS!

What asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have proved False to their fathers' memory, false to the faith they loved; If _she_ can scoff at Freedom, and its Great Charter spurn, Must _we_ of Ma.s.sachusetts from truth and duty turn?

_We_ hunt your bondmen, flying from Slavery's hateful h.e.l.l?

_Our_ voices, at your bidding, take up the blood-hound's yell?

_We_ gather, at your summons, above our fathers' graves, From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear your wretched slaves?

Thank G.o.d! not yet so vilely can Ma.s.sachusetts bow, The spirit of her early time is with her even now.

Dream not, because her Pilgrim blood moves slow, and calm, and cool, She thus can stoop her chainless neck, a sister's slave and tool!

For ourselves and for our children, the vow which we have given For Freedom and Humanity, is registered in Heaven.

No slave-hunt in _our_ borders! No pirate on _our_ strand!

No fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon _our_ land!

J.G. WHITTIER.

THE HIGHER LAW.

Man was not made for forms, but forms for man; And there are times when Law itself must bend To that clear spirit, that hath still outran The speed of human justice. In the end, Potentates, not Humanity, must fall.

Water will find its level; fire will burn; The winds must blow around this earthly ball; This earthly ball by day and night must turn.

Freedom is typed in every element.

Man _must_ be free! If not _through_ law, why then _Above_ the law! until its force be spent, And justice brings a better. When, O, when, Father of Light! shall the great reckoning come, To lift the weak, and strike the oppressor dumb?

C.P. CRANCH.

ON THE SURRENDER OF A FUGITIVE SLAVE.

Look on who will in apathy, and stifle, they who _can_, The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man; Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up, with interest or with ease, Consent to hear, with quiet pulse, of loathsome deeds like these.

I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk, that will not let me rest; And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame, 'Tis but my Bay State dialect--our fathers spake the same.

Shame on the costly mockery of piling stone on stone To those who won _our_ liberty! the heroes dead and gone!

While we look coldly on and see law-s.h.i.+elded ruffians slay The men who fain would win their _own_! the heroes of _to-day_!

Are we pledged to craven silence? O, fling it to the wind, The parchment wall that bars us from the least of human kind!

That makes us cringe, and temporize, and dumbly stand at rest, While Pity's burning flood of words is red-hot in the breast!

We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more, To the sympathies that G.o.d hath set within our spirit's core.

Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so; but then Before Man made us _citizens_, great Nature made us _men_!

Though we break our fathers' promise, we have n.o.bler duties first, The traitor to _Humanity_ is the traitor most accurst.

_Man_ is more than _Const.i.tutions_. Better rot beneath the sod, Than be true to _Church_ and _State_, while we are doubly false to G.o.d!

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.

Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are wrought Which well might shame extremest h.e.l.l?

Shall freemen lock the indignant thought?

Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell?

Shall Honor bleed? Shall Truth succ.u.mb?

Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb?

What! shall we guard our neighbor still.

While woman shrieks beneath his rod, And while he tramples down, at will, The image of a common G.o.d?

Shall watch and ward be round him set Of Northern nerve and bayonet?

And shall we know, and share with him, The danger and the growing shame?

And see our Freedom's light grow dim, Which should have filled the world with flame?

And, writhing, feel, where'er we turn, A world's reproach around us burn?

No! By each spot of haunted ground, Where Freedom weeps her children's fall; By Plymouth's rock, and Bunker's mound; By Griswold's stained and shattered wall; By Warren's ghost; by Langdon's shade; By all the memories of our dead;

By their enlarging souls, which burst The bands and fetters round them set; By the free Pilgrim spirit, nursed Within our bosoms yet; By all above, around, below, Be ours the indignant answer--NO!

J.G. WHITTIER.

VERMONT PERSONAL LIBERTY LAW.

AN ACT TO SECURE FREEDOM TO ALL PERSONS WITHIN THIS STATE.

_It is hereby enacted, &c.:_

Sec. 1. No person within this State shall be considered as property, or subject, as such, to sale, purchase, or delivery; nor shall any person, within the limits of this State, at this time, be deprived of liberty or property without due process of law.

Sec. 2. Due process of law, mentioned in the preceding section of this Act shall, in all cases, be defined to mean the usual process and forms in force by the laws of this State, and issued by the courts thereof; and under such process, such person shall be ent.i.tled to a trial by jury.

Sec. 3. Whenever any person in this State shall be deprived of liberty, arrested, or detained, on the ground that such person owes service or labor to another person, not an inhabitant of this State, either party may claim a trial by jury; and, in such case, challenges shall be allowed to the defendant agreeably to sections four and five of chapter one hundred and eleven of the compiled statutes.

Sec. 4. Every person who shall deprive or attempt to deprive any other person of his or her liberty, contrary to the preceding sections of this Act, shall, on conviction thereof, forfeit and pay a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars nor less than five hundred dollars, or be punished by imprisonment in the State Prison for a term not exceeding ten years: _Provided_, that nothing in said preceding sections shall apply to, or affect the right to arrest or imprison under existing laws for contempt of court.

Sec. 5. Neither descent near or remote from an African, whether such African is or may have been a slave or not, nor color of skin or complexion, shall disqualify any person from being, or prevent any person from becoming, a citizen of this State, nor deprive such person of the rights and privileges thereof.

Sec. 6. Every person who may have been held as a slave, who shall come, or be brought, or be in this State, with or without the consent of his or her master or mistress, or who shall come, or be brought, or be, involuntarily or in any way in this State, shall be free.

Sec. 7. Every person who shall hold, or attempt to hold, in this State, in slavery, or as a slave, any person mentioned as a slave in the sixth section of this act, or any free person, in any form, or for any time, however short, under pretence that such person is or has been a slave, shall, on conviction thereof, be imprisoned in the State Prison for a term not less than one year, nor more than fifteen years, and be fined not exceeding two thousand dollars.