a successful one; for there is no virtue in loving freedom for CHAP. XI. ourselves." 1851. Of the Syracusans at least this selfish love of freedom could not be predicated. The freemen's spirit which had welcomed Thompson and the American Anti-Slavery Society, in confirmation of the local defiance of the Fugitive Slave Law, wrested, on October 1, 1851, the slave Jerry Lib. 21:162, by force from the clutches of the police, and rebuked the dishonoring prophecy of the apostate Webster. Samuel J. May to Miss Charlotte G. Coffin.1 SYRACUSE, Oct. 15 [16], 1851. I am too busy to write you a long letter, but I must write a few lines to relieve your anxiety to know what is the present aspect of our controversy with the Government. After a fortnight's diligent search after materials to make out a case of “constructive" treason against Gerrit Smith, Charles A. Wheaton, Samuel J. May, and five others, and to find grounds for the indictment of sixteen for aiding and abetting the rescue of poor Jerry, we were informed last evening that the District Attorney had made application to the Judge for warrants for the alleged twenty-four offenders, and had been refused, on account of the insufficiency of his evidence. How this may be, we shall know, I suppose, to-day or to-morrow. It is probably true, and the bluster of the Attorney and his compatriots will die away in examinations before the Commissioner, which I think will end in the commitment of no one; for I am told that all those individuals who can be identified as having taken part in the rescue of Jerry, have gone away where they cannot be followed. 166. Ante, p. 331. MS. We yesterday had a large county Convention here, that the Lib. 21:170. people might express their detestation of the Fugitive Slave Law. It was fully attended. Several excellent speeches were made, and an address was prepared for publication, as the sentiment of the Convention, to be signed by the President, Vice-Presidents, and Secretaries, and circulated far and wide. It is an excellent and bold document, which I think will make some impression. I made a speech which the Convention voted also to publish and send throughout the land, so I must hasten 1 A sister of Mrs. May. CHAP. XI. 1851. MS. to prepare it for publication. The sentiment of our city and county is nobly right on the question which the rescue has raised. Men that I supposed cared not at all for the enslavement of our colored countrymen, have taken pains to express to me their detestation of the attempt to rob Jerry of his liberty. You may, if you please, give this half-sheet to Mr. Garrison -not, however, to be published, though he may use the facts (or the rumors) I have given you. Samuel J. May to W. L. Garrison. SYRACUSE, Nov. 23, 1851. Through all the season of trial and commotion that we have had here since Oct. 1st, not a word has passed directly between you and myself. But I have felt as if our spirits were all the while in close communion, so that you knew what I was doing or intending to do, and I knew that you were consenting to it all. In the whole course of our struggle with the monster Slavery, I have never been so active, bold, tranquil, and happy. I have felt the strongest assurance that our Government was clearly in the wrong, and could not maintain its position except by the grossest abuses of its powers-such abuses as the people could not, would not, tolerate. I have seen that it was necessary to bring the people into direct conflict with the Government, that the Government may be made to understand that it has transcended its limits and must recede. This will be the result. The Union will not be dissolved much more than it is now dissolved; and the Fugitive Slave Law will not be, for it cannot be, generally enforced. As far as I can learn, twenty-five persons have been indicted twelve of them colored men, all but three of whom have escaped to Canada, beyond the reach of our Government; and four of the white men have also gone thither. So that not more than twelve or thirteen will be put under bonds. Of these I trust not more than two or three will ever be tried, and not one of them convicted. I am afraid that those who are tried will not take the right ground. They will attempt to avoid conviction by breaking down the witnesses, many of whom are men of very bad character; or they will destroy their evidence by opposing testimony. I long to have some one acknowledge the fact, if he did anything to help Jerry's escape, and rest his defence, 1st, upon the uncon stitutionality of the Law; 2dly, upon the egregious wickedness of the Law. It is now no longer probable that either Gerrit Smith, Charles A. Wheaton, or myself, will be indicted.1 I suppose that warrants were issued by Judge Conkling for me and for Mr. Wheaton. Why they were not served, the managers of such matters best know. It is not that we have cowered to them. I have spoken and written, if possible, more plainly and earnestly than ever. Samuel J. May to W. L. Garrison. SYRACUSE, Dec. 6, 1851. Cf. Lib. 21: 198. Alfred Conkling. MS. My controversy with Mr. Comstock waxes warmer. I will send you my last letter, part of which appeared in this morning's Star, and the residue of it will come out on Monday. Perhaps you Dec. 8, 1851. will think that I go too far in enjoining it upon all men to act Lib. 21:198. against the Fugitive Slave Law as they conscientiously believe to be right, even if it be to fight for the rescue of its victims. But I know not what other counsel to give them.2 And let me confess to you, that when I saw poor Jerry in the hands of the official kidnappers, I could not preach non-resistance very earnestly to the crowd that were clamoring for his release. And when I found that he had been rescued without serious harm to any one, I was as uproarious as any one in my joy. The Government party here are most especially mad at me; but I am happy to add that my church and the majority of the citizens stand by me well. If we cannot kill this infernal Law, it will kill us. So I think we have come to the death-grapple. If we drive the Slave Power back from this position, it will be all the easier to continue the rout. Gerrit Smith to W. L. Garrison. PETERBORO', December 31, 1851. On my return to-day from Syracuse, I find upon my office table the volume of Selections from your Speeches and Writings. 1 They were, however (Lib. 21: 187), at Auburn; and, bailors being called for, "Hon. William H. Seward stepped forward and put his name first upon the bond," and afterwards entertained the "traitors" at his home. They were never tried. See the full account of the Jerry rescue in May's 'Recollections of the A. S. Conflict,' pp. 373-384. 2 Mr. Garrison could not have been troubled by this counsel, which resembled his own to the colored people of Boston (ante, p. 303). VOL. III.-22 MS. CHAP. XI. 1851. Very, very highly do I prize this volume, not only because of the merit of its pages, but also because you have presented it to me. To be numbered by William Lloyd Garrison among his friends is one of my highest gratifications and honors. I went to Syracuse to spend several hours with our friend S. J. May. May and other abolitionists in talking about the "Jerry Indictments." I take a deep interest in them; and I entertain a strong hope that no little gain to the cause of Liberty will come from them. 285. Ante, 2:230. The volume of 'Selections' referred to by Mr. Smith was a duodecimo of somewhat more than four hundred Ante, 1:290. pages, consisting of extracts from the 'Thoughts on Ante, 1:127. Colonization,' the antecedent Park-Street Church address, Ante, 1:256, and from addresses to the colored people; the Liberator Ante, 1:224. salutatory; the Declaration of Sentiments of the AmeriAnte, 1:408. can Anti-Slavery Society, and of the American Peace Convention; a 'Short Catechism adapted to all parts of the United States'; 1 and many editorial articles on Peace, the Bible, the Constitution, etc., from the Liberator's twenty-one volumes, together with the best of Mr. Garrison's verse. The letter to Peleg Sprague was not omitted, and the Appendix contained a portion of Sprague's Faneuil Ante, 2:11. Hall speech, the account of the Boston mob of October 21, 1835, written by its victim, Thompson's letter addressed to Ante, 1:297. him on the day following, and sundry proofs of the character of the Colonization Society. The title-page bore these lines from Coleridge's 'Fears in Solitude': Ante, 1:505. Ante, 1:496. "O my brethren! I have told Most BITTER TRUTH, but without bitterness. Who, playing tricks with Conscience, dare not look At their own vices." 1 E. g. "1. Why is American slaveholding not in all cases sinful? - Because its victims are black. 2. Why is gradual emancipation right?Because the slaves are black. 3. Why is immediate emancipation wrong, dangerous, impracticable? - Because the slaves are black,” etc. CHAPTER XII. KOSSUTH.-1852. F 1852. ATHER MATHEW'S stay in America outlasted CHAP. XII. two years. A nine days' wonder, he was heard and thought of no more after (like a candle lowered into a foul well) he had taken his passports for the South. On November 8, 1851, he sailed from New York, recalling Lib. 21: 185. himself for a moment to public attention by issuing a farewell address. He professed to have added more than 600,000 disciples to the cause of total abstinence- an empty boast. He tendered to his countrymen on this side of the Atlantic some wholesome parting advice, but with a grave omission as to their duty towards slavery, which Mr. Garrison supplied by appending to the address in the Liberator the Irish Address of 1842. Father Lib. 21:185. Mathew left also his thanks to individuals—to a slaveholder, first of all: to Henry Clay, namely. To the same hollow friend alike of temperance and of freedom, he wrote on December 29, 1851, from Cork, sending good wishes and blessings for the New Year to the "pride and glory" of the United States, and writing himself down "the most grateful of your admirers." Father Mathew had, nevertheless, witnessed on the spot the degradation of the North by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, thanks to Clay above all other men. He had seen the workings of that measure in all their atrocity Colton's Private Corr. of Clay, p. 624. the land stirred as never before, in its good and bad elements. He had seen the suppression of free speech attempted, in the name of the Union and the Constitution, by the dregs of society like Rynders, with the approval of Ante, p. 288. 339 |