account; but the offence was, in doing the deed 'before all Israel and the sun.' It was 'insulting (!) the convictions of others, whose views of the Constitution are as honest, and perhaps as sensible,' as my own. I'should have retired to some corner, and burned it on my own private and particular hook, without outraging the feelings of my audience' !!! "Let me tell the Commonwealth that slavery is a public, not a private concern -a national, not a local system; that it is silly and impertinent to suggest privacy of action against it; that, in the struggle for its overthrow, I neither seek nor take advantage of any man unfairly; that my testimonies, in whatever form given, are for the nation, not for the chimney corner. "If, for almost a score of years, on all occasions, I have branded the U. S. Constitution as a blood-stained instrumentand if, during all that time, I have disfranchised myself, for conscience' and the slave's sake, under it was it to 'insult' any one for me to reduce my verbal impeachment to a positive act, in order to make my position palpable to the dullest vision viz., by burning a few leaves on which that Constitution was printed, as a token of my utter abhorrence of it? The objection is too absurd to require a serious refutation. "Ah! but there were anti-slavery men at Framingham 'who hold that the Constitution of the United States furnishes no aid whatever to slavery." Do they indeed? Well, what then? Am I to substitute their convictions for my own? If they have discovered an anti-slavery Constitution, they know I did not burn that (why should I?) on the occasion referred to. How many such were present, I do not know-probably not a ‘baker's dozen' in that assembly of three thousand. I burnt a PRO-SLAVERY Constitution, in my judgment, in the judgment of the nation ever since its adoption, and therefore was faithful to the slave in so doing; and not one of his 'sincere and true friends' will ever reproach me for the deed the light of which shall be seen long after 'this mortal shall have put on immortality.'" CHAP. XIV. 1854. From this date the Free Soilers exhibited great sensitiveness to any confounding of themselves with the abolitionists. Their revival, by the folly of those who raised again the issue of slavery extension, had now come with a strength hitherto unknown. From the Ohio wing the Mas- Lib. 24: 126, sachusetts Free Soilers adopted the name of the Republi 146. 1854. Lib. 24: 146. 24:146. CHAP. XIV. can Party, affirming it to be preeminently the party of the Union and the Constitution, of law and order, and the true National and Democratic Party, "because it is opposed, in its principles, sentiments, and aims, to Sectionalism, Secession, and Disunion." "No matter for the rest [of the Lib. 24: 146. resolutions], however worded," said Mr. Garrison; "they are nothing but idle breath and impracticable issues, as time will demonstrate. There is but one honest, straightforward course to pursue if we would see the Slave Power overthrown — THE UNION MUST BE DISSOLVED!" 25:9. 98, IOI. 182. 1 For the moment, in Massachusetts, in New Hampshire, and elsewhere, the course pursued by the Free Soilers was, Lib.24: 182; while maintaining a separate organization, to coquet with the mushroom National, Native-American, or Know-NothLib. 24:157, ing Party, pro-slavery as its professions were. The nom189; 25:97, inal defeat which this party inflicted on them at the fall Lib. 24:182. elections of 1854 really inured to their great and sudden advantage in the Federal as well as in the State arena,1 Lib. 24:178, and gave the coup de grâce to the remnant of the Whig organization. This fact, with the general rout of the DemLib. 24: 205. ocratic Party at the same elections in the North, caused genuine alarm to the Slave Power, and confirmed it in its efforts to colonize Kansas. Fraud and violence - without actual bloodshed-were freely practised in the new TerLib. 24:194, ritory. Armed "border ruffians" from Missouri crossed the line to elect a pro-slavery Delegate to Congress. Civilization and barbarism confronted each other with weapons drawn, and the year closed with all eyes turned on the scene of impending warfare. 197, 201, 202, 205. 1 The Know-Nothing Massachusetts Legislature elected sweepingly in 1854 was, as Mr. Garrison remarked (Lib. 25:86), the most democratic known in the annals of the State. "The aristocratic [or "respectable"] element was completely exorcised out of it.” BY CHAPTER XV. THE PERSONAL LIBERTY LAW.-1855. Y midsummer of 1855, out of eleven United States Lib. 25: 106. ern States since the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 51, 99. ing been carried by the Know-Nothings, returned John P. Lib. 25 : 43, Hale to the Senate. And, fresh from this act of defiance, its Legislature opened, on June 22, the Hall of the House Lib. 25: 102. of Representatives to an abolition convention in session. at the capital, and listened without disfavor to disunion addresses from Garrison and Phillips. The year closed with an ominous struggle in the Federal House of Repre- Lib. 25:203. sentatives over the speakership; the Free-State candidate being Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts, who had lately, in a speech made in Maine, expressed his willing 26:2. ness to "let the Union'slide'" in the event of the Gov- Lib.25:181; ernment falling completely into the hands of the Slave Power. It was reserved for Massachusetts to furnish the most signal examples of resistance to that Power, and to take, logically and in the eyes of the South, a disunion attitude. The first was the address of its Legislature to, the Gov- Lib. 25:75. ernor, praying for the removal of Edward Greely Loring from his office of Judge of Probate for having, as United States Commissioner, sent Anthony Burns back into bondage. This action was in response to petitions actively circulated by the abolitionists, and to arguments at special hearings, in which Wendell Phillips distin Lib. 25: 23. Lib. 25:30, 33, 35, 59. Henry J. guished himself. Though overruled by Governor Gardner, it had the moral effect intended. When, on April 27, Lib. 25:70. the Senate came to vote upon it, Mr. Garrison was taken from the throng of spectators and given a chair beside the President. 79; Acts and Resolves of Mass., p. 924. Lib. 25: [6], 36. Ante, p. 92. Lib. 25:71. Simultaneously with this advertisement, that the State washed its official hands of all complicity in the execution Lib. 25:71, of the Fugitive Slave Law, came the passage of "An Act to protect the rights and liberties of the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." This, too, was in response to petitions and arguments from the abolitionists, with Wendell Phillips again at the front. It was an extension of the Personal Liberty Act of March 24, 1843, to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Habeas corpus was secured to the alleged fugitive; no confessions of his were admissible, but the burden of proof was to be upon the claimant, and no ex-parte affidavit should be received. For a State office-holder to issue a warrant under the law was tantamount to resignation; for an attorney to assist the claimant was to forfeit his right to practise in the courts; for a judge to do either was to make himself liable to impeachment or removal by address. No United States Commissioner under the Fugitive Slave Law should hold any State office. Any State judge (like Loring), continuing to be United States Commissioner after the passage of the act, would invite the consequences of misbehavior. No sheriff, jailer, or policeman could help arrest a fugitive, no jail receive him. The militia could not be called out on the claimant's behalf. The Governor should appoint county commissioners to help defend fugitives and secure them a fair trial. Regarded as a safeguard against kidnapping, this statute will never seem more than the simple duty of the State. As an impediment to the Federal execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, the discussion of its constitutionality may be left to those who think it profitable. The South 94, 97, 101, treated it — as it did any diminution, not of the constitutional compromise, but of the letter of the law of 1850-as Lib. 25:93, 105,117, 129; 26:17, 21. 1855. an act of disunion, that demanded extraordinary measures CHAP. XV. of retaliation, even to the exclusion of the State's representatives in Congress. Governor Gardner viewed it in the same light when he vetoed it, but the Legislature stood Lib. 25 : 82. firm, and passed the act again over his veto. It was the high-water mark of Northern manhood. Lib. 25: 17, 55, 61, 62, 66, 67, 73. Lib. 25: 123. Lib. 25: 123. Lib. 25: 133, 146; 26:49. Lib. 25 :71. Lib. 25:67, 123. 134, 139, 143, Lib. 25: 131. Lib. 25:146. Lib. 25: 191, In Kansas, on the other hand, the Slave Power was in the ascendant. Hordes of degraded beings, such as only slavery and whiskey could produce, crossed in arms at the spring elections from Missouri into the Territory, took possession of the polling-places, terrorized and maltreated judges of election and free-State voters, stuffed the boxes with ballots in wild excess of the census-voting population, and elected a legislature which purged itself of every free-State delegate, removed the capital nearer the Missouri border, adopted the slave code of that State, and in other ways completed what Governor Reeder himself rightly called the subjugation of Kansas. Powerless to rectify the doings of this bogus body, for what he did do honestly the Governor was removed by President Pierce and succeeded by Wilson Shannon, who acknowledged the legality of the Legislature, and put himself openly at the head of the invaders, assuring them of the firm support of the Administration at Washington. Every difference growing out of the unsettled state of society in a new country and disputes over titles to the land were inevitable—was liable to array free-State men against slaveState, and to end in bloodshed. The first homicide of this Lib. 25:86, character occurred before Governor Reeder's dismissal, and nearly led to a pitched battle. Arms were sent to the Territory by the friends of the Emigrant Aid Association to prevent the extermination of the Northern settlers. Gerrit Smith and his little knot of Simon Pure Liberty Party men, now styling themselves Radical Political Abolitionists and met in convention at Syracuse June 27, 28, took up a collection in response to an appeal from “ a Mr. John Brown, who had five sons in Kansas, and who Lib. 25: 107. was desirous to join them. They had written for arms VOL. III.-27 193, 201. 87, 105, 131. Lib. 25:91; Sanborn's John Brown, pp. 212-215. |