Receive our air, that moment they are free!
They touch our country, and their shackles fall!"
If you cannot be induced to reform this great wickedness, for the sake of outraged justice and humanity, then do it for the honor of the State, for the political welfare of our own people, for the moral character of our posterity. For, as sure as there is a Righteous Ruler in the heavens, if you continue to be accomplices in violence and fraud, God will not "save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."
L. MARIA CHILD.
APPEAL TO THE
CONSTITUTIONALITY
OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT.
The Hon. Robert Rantoul, Hon. Horace Mann, Hon. Charles Sumner, and other able men, have argued against the Constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Bill, proving it to be not only contrary to the spirit and meaning of the Constitution, but also to be unauthorized by the letter of that document. That this nefarious Bill is contrary to the spirit and intention of the Constitution is shown by the published opinions of those who framed it; by the debates at the time of its adoption; and by its Preamble, which sets forth that it was ordained to "establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty." The arguments adduced to prove that this bill is unauthorized by the letter of the Constitution, I will endeavor to compress into a few words.
Article 10 of the Amendments to the Constitution expressly provides that
"Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Article 4 of the Constitution contains four compacts. The first is:
"Full faith and credit shall be given in each of the States to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may, by general laws, prescribe the manner in which such acts, records and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof."
Here, power is expressly delegated by the Constitution to the United States.
The second compact is:
"The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States."
Under this provision, an attempt was made to obtain some action of Congress for the protection of colored seamen in slaveholding ports; but it was decided that Congress had no power to act on the subject, because the Constitution had not delegated any power to the United States in the clause referred to. Slaveholders are very strict in adherence to the Constitution, whenever any question of protection to colored people is involved in their decisions; but for purposes of oppression, they have no scruples. They reverse the principle of Common Law, that "in any question under the Constitution, every word is to be construed in favor of liberty."
The third compact is:
"A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, or be found in another State, shall, on demand of the Executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime."
It has never been pretended that Congress has any power to act in such cases. There is no clause delegating any power to the United States; consequently, all proceedings on the subject have been left to the several States.
The fourth compact is:
"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
If the framers of the Constitution had meant that Congress should have power to pass a law for delivering up fugitives "held to service or labor," they would have inserted a clause delegating such power, as they did in the compact concerning "public acts and records." The Constitution does not delegate any such power to the United States. Consequently, Congress had no constitutional right to pass the Fugitive Slave Bill, and the States are under no constitutional obligation to obey it.
The Hon. Horace Mann, one of Massachusetts' most honored sons, in his able speech on this subject in Congress, 1851, said:—"In view of the great principles of civil liberty, out of which the Constitution grew, and which it was designed to secure, my own opinion is that this law cannot be fairly and legitimately supported on constitutional grounds. Having formed this opinion with careful deliberation, I am bound to speak from it and to act from it. I have read every argument and every article in defence of the law, from whatever source emanating. Nay, I have been more anxious to read the arguments made in its favor, than the arguments against it; and I think I have seen a sound legal answer to all the former." * * * "It is a law that might be held constitutional by a bench of slaveholders, whose pecuniary interests connect them directly with slavery; or by those who have surrendered themselves to a pro-slavery policy from political hopes. But if we gather the opinions of unbiassed and disinterested men, of those who have no money to make, and no office to hope for, through the triumph of this law, then I think the preponderance of opinion is decidedly against its constitutionality. It is a fact universally known, that gentlemen who have occupied and adorned the highest judicial stations in their respective States, together with many of the ablest lawyers in the whole country, have expressed opinions against the constitutionality of this law." * * * "When I am called upon to support such a law as this, while it lasts, or to desist from opposing it in all constitutional ways, my response is, Repeal the law! that I may no longer be called upon to support it. I demand it, because it is a law which conflicts with the Constitution of the country, and with all the judicial interpretations of that Constitution, wherever they have been applied to the white race. Because it is a law abhorrent to the moral and religious sentiments of a vast majority of the community called upon to enforce it. Because it is a law which, if executed in the Free States, divests them of the character of Free States, and makes them voluntary participators in the guilt of slaveholding. Because it is a law Which disgraces our country in the eyes of the whole civilized world, and gives plausible occasion to the votaries of despotic power to decry republican institutions. Because it is a law which forbids us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and which makes it a crime to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and to visit and succor the sick and imprisoned. Because it is a law which renders the precepts of the Gospel and the teachings of Jesus Christ seditious; and were the Savior and his band of disciples now on earth, there is but one of them who would escape its penalties by pretending to 'conquer his prejudices.'" * * * "Suppose the whole body of the white population should be as much endangered by this law, as the colored people now are, would the existence of the law be tolerated for an hour? Would there not be a simultaneous and universal uprising of the people against it, and such a yell of execration as never before burst from mortal lips?"
The Hon. Charles Sumner, always true to the right, as the needle to the pole, in his learned and able speech in Congress, 1852, said:—"The true principles of our political system, the history of the National Convention, the natural interpretation of the Constitution, all teach that this Act is a usurpation by Congress of powers that do not belong to it, and an infraction of rights secured to the States. It is a sword, whose handle is at the National Capital, and whose point is every where in the States. A weapon so terrible to personal liberty the nation has no power to grasp." * * * "In the name of the Constitution, which it violates; of my country, which it dishonors; of humanity, which it degrades; of Christianity, which it offends, I arraign this enactment, and now hold it up to the judgment of the Senate and the world." * * * *
"The Slave Act violates the Constitution, and shocks the public conscience. With modesty, and yet with firmness, let me add, it offends against the Divine Law. No such enactment can be entitled to support. As the throne of God is above every earthly throne, so are his laws and statutes above all the laws and statutes of man. To question these, is to question God himself. But to assume that human laws are above question, is to claim for their fallible authors infallibility. To assume that they are always in conformity with those of God, is presumptuously and impiously to exalt man to an equality with God. Clearly, human laws are not always in such conformity; nor can they ever be beyond question from each individual. Where the conflict is open, as if Congress should demand the perpetration of murder, the office of conscience, as final arbiter, is undisputed. But in every conflict, the same queenly office is hers. By no earthly power can she be dethroned. Each person, after anxious examination, without haste, without passion, solemnly for himself must decide this great controversy. Any other rule attributes infallibility to human laws, places them beyond question, and degrades all men to an unthinking, passive obedience. The mandates of an earthly power are to be discussed; those of Heaven must at once be performed; nor can any agreement constrain us against God. Such is the rule of morals. And now the rule is commended to us. The good citizen, as he thinks of the shivering fugitive, guilty of no crime, pursued, hunted down like a beast, while praying for Christian help and deliverance, and as he reads the requirements of this Act, is filled with horror. Here is a despotic mandate, 'to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution of this law.' Let me speak frankly. Not rashly would I set myself against any provision of law. This grave responsibility I would not lightly assume. But here the path of duty is clear. By the Supreme Law, which commands me to do no injustice; by the comprehensive Christian Law of Brotherhood; by the Constitution, which I have sworn to support, I am bound to disobey this Act. Never, in any capacity, can I render voluntary aid in its execution. Pains and penalties I will endure; but this great wrong I will not do." * * * "For the sake of peace and tranquillity, cease to shock the public conscience! For the sake of the Constitution, cease to exercise a power which is nowhere granted, and which violates inviolable rights expressly secured. Repeal this enactment! Let its terrors no longer rage through the land. Mindful of the lowly, whom it pursues; mindful of the good men perplexed by its requirements; in the name of charity, in the name of the Constitution, repeal this enactment, totally, and without delay! Be admonished by these words of Oriental piety: 'Beware of the groans of the wounded souls. Oppress not to the utmost a single heart; for a solitary sigh has power to overset a whole world.'"
Robert Rantoul, Jr., whose large heart was so true to Democratic principles, that the party wanted to expel him from their ranks, (as parties are prone to do with honest men,) opposed the Fugitive Slave Bill with all the power of his strong intellect. In a speech delivered in 1851, he said: "I am as devotedly attached as any other man to the Union of these States, and the Constitution of our government; but I admire and love them for that which they secure to us. The Constitution is good, and great, and valuable, and to be held for ever sacred, because it secures to us what was the object of the Constitution. I love the Union and the Constitution, not for themselves, but for the great end for which they were created—to secure and perpetuate liberty; not the liberty of a class, superimposed upon the thraldom of groaning multitudes: not the liberty of a ruling race, cemented by the tears and blood of subject races, but human liberty, perfect liberty, common to the whole people of the United States and to their posterity. It is because I believe all this, that I love the Union and the Constitution. If it were not for that, the Union would be valueless, and the Constitution not worth the parchment on which it is written. God-given Liberty is above the Union, and above the Constitution, and above all the works of man."
TESTIMONIES AGAINST
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT.
The Hon. Josiah Quincy, senior, whose integrity, noble intellect, and long experience in public life, give great weight to his opinions, made a speech at a Whig Convention in Boston, 1854, from which I extract the following:—"The circumstances in which the people of Massachusetts are placed are undeniably insupportable. What has been seen, what has been felt, by every man, woman and child in this metropolis, and in this community? and virtually by every man, woman and child in Massachusetts? We have seen our Court House in chains, two battalions of dragoons, eight regiments of artillery, twelve companies of infantry, the whole constabulary force of the city police, the entire disposable marine of the United States, with its artillery loaded for action, all marching in support of a Praetorian Band, consisting of one hundred and twenty friends and associates of the U.S. Marshal, with loaded pistols and drawn swords, and in military costume and array; and for what purpose? To escort and conduct a poor trembling slave from a Boston Court House to the fetters and lash of his master!
"This scene, thus awful, thus detestable, every inhabitant of this metropolis, nay, every inhabitant of this Commonwealth, may be compelled again to witness, at any time, and every day in the year, at the will or the whim of the meanest and basest slaveholder of the South. Is there a man in Massachusetts with a spirit so low, so debased, so corrupted by his fears, or his fortune, that he is prepared to say this is a condition of things to be endured in perpetuity by us? and that this is an inheritance to be transmitted by us to our children, for all generations? For so long as the fugitive-slave clause remains in the Constitution, unobliterated, it is an obligation perpetual upon them, as well as upon us.
"The obligation incumbent upon the Free States must be obliterated from the Constitution, at every hazard. I believe that, in the nature of things, by the law of God, and the laws of man, that clause is at this moment abrogated, so far as respects common obligation. In 1789, the Free States agreed to be field-drivers and pound-keepers for the Slaveholding States, within the limits, and according to the fences, of the old United States. But between that year and this A.D. 1854, the slaveholders have broken down the old boundaries, and opened new fields, of an unknown and indefinite extent.[1] They have multiplied their slaves by millions, and are every day increasing their numbers, and extending their field into the wilderness. Under these circumstances, are we bound to be their field-drivers and pound-keepers any longer? Answer me, people of Massachusetts! Are you the sons of the men of 1776? Or do you 'lack gall, to make oppression bitter?'
"I have pointed out your burden. I have shown you that it is insupportable. I shall be asked how we are to get rid of it. It is not for a private individual to point the path which a State is to pursue, to cast off an insupportable burden; it belongs to the constituted authorities of that State. But this I will say, that if the people of Massachusetts solemnly adopt, as one man, in the spirit of their fathers, the resolve that they will no longer submit to this burden, and will call upon the Free States to concur in this resolution, and carry it into effect, the burden will be cast off; the fugitive-slave clause will be obliterated, not only without the dissolution of the Union, but with a newly-acquired strength to the Union.".
In the spring of 1860, there was a debate on this subject in the Legislature of New York. In the course of it, Mr. Smith, of Chatauqua, said:—"How came slavery in this country? It came here without law; in violation of all law. It came here by force and violence; by the force of might over right; and it remains here to-day by no better title. And now we are called upon, by the ruling power at Washington, not merely to tolerate it, but to legalize it all over the United States! By the Fugitive Slave Bill, we are forbidden to shelter or assist the forlornest stranger who ever appealed for sympathy or aid. We are required by absolute law to shut out every feeling of compassion for suffering humanity. Fines and imprisonment impend over us, for exercising one of the holiest charities of our religion. Virtue and humanity are legislated into crime. Let us meet the issue like men! Let us assert our utter abhorrence of all human laws, that compel us to violate the common law of humanity and justice; and by so acting assert the broad principles of the Declaration of American Independence, and the letter and spirit of the Constitution. If the North was as devoted to the cause of Freedom as the South is to Slavery, our national troubles would vanish like darkness before the sun. Our country would then become what it should be,—free, happy, prosperous, and respected by all the world. Then we could say, truthfully, that she is the home of the free, the land of the brave, the asylum of the oppressed."
In the same debate, Mr. Maxson, of Allegheny, said:—"All laws, whether Constitutions or statutes, that invade human rights, are null. A community has no more power to strike down the rights of man by Constitutions, 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 Constitution. 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."
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 Massachusetts from truth and duty turn?
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?
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 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!
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?
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.
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.
To those who won our liberty! the heroes dead and gone!
While we look coldly on and see law-shielded ruffians slay
The men who fain would win their own! the heroes of to-day!
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!
To the sympathies that God 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!
The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accurst.
Man is more than Constitutions. Better rot beneath the sod,
Than be true to Church and State, while we are doubly false to God!
Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are wrought
Which well might shame extremest hell?
Shall freemen lock the indignant thought?
Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell?
Shall Honor bleed? Shall Truth succumb?
Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb?
While woman shrieks beneath his rod,
And while he tramples down, at will,
The image of a common God?
Shall watch and ward be round him set
Of Northern nerve and bayonet?
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?
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;
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!
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 entitled 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.
Sec. 8. All Acts and parts of Acts inconsistent with the provisions of this Act are hereby repealed.
Sec. 9. This Act shall take effect from its passage.
Approved November 25, 1858.