THE FUGITIVE SLAVE.
Fugitive slave with hat, bag and dog
The following is from the Washington (Pa.) Patriot of 1846: “We learn that a few days ago, a fugitive slave from Maryland was pursued and overtaken in Somerset county, in this State by a man named Holland, a wagoner from Ohio, who was tempted to the task by the reward offered, $150. When they reached McCarty’s tavern the slave attempted to escape, but was caught by Holland while in the act of climbing a fence. The slave drew a long knife, which he had concealed about his person, and plunged it into Holland’s heart, causing his death instantly. He made good his escape, immediately pursued by the people of the neighborhood, who at nightfall, had surrounded him, but in the darkness of the night he eluded their vigilance, and is now beyond their reach.”
The Hon. J. R. Giddings, in a speech in the House of Representatives, at Washington, Feb. 18, 1846, said—“In regard to arresting slaves, we [of the free States] owe no duties to the master; on the contrary, all our sympathies, our feelings, and our moral duties, beyond what I have stated, are with the slave. We will neither arrest him for the master, nor will we assist the master in making such arrest. I am aware that the third clause of the second section of the first article of the Constitution was once believed, by some, to impose upon the people of these free States the duty of arresting fugitive slaves. But it is now judicially settled that no such obligation rests upon us. Indeed a proposition to impose upon us such a duty, at the time of framing the Constitution, was rejected, without a division, by the Convention. We, therefore, leave the master to arrest the slave if he can; and we leave the slave to defend himself against the master if he can. We do not interfere between them. The slave possesses as perfect a right to defend his person and his liberty against the master as any citizen of our State. Our laws protect him against every other person, except the master or his agent, but they leave him to protect himself against them. If he, while defending himself, slays the master, our laws do not interfere to punish him in any way, further than they would any other person who should slay a man in actual self-defence. The laws of the slave State cannot reach him, nor is there any law, of God or man, that condemns him. On the contrary, our reason, our judgment, our humanity approves the act; and we admire the courage and firmness with which he defends the ”inalienable rights with which the God of Nature has endowed him.“ We regard him as a hero worthy of imitation; and we place his name in the same category with that of Madison Washington, who, on board the Creole, boldly maintained his God-given rights, against those inhuman pirates who were carrying him and his fellow-servants to a worse than savage slave-market.”
Another Slave Suicide.“The slave of a farmer in an adjoining county, (Jefferson,) having been jumped upon and stamped by his master,with spurs on, so as to cruelly lacerate his face as well as his body, he was found, next morning, in an adjacent pond or stream of water—having tied a stone to his own neck, (as it is said,) and plunged in, for the successful purpose of drowning himself, under the feelings of desperation caused by the fiendish treatment of his master!”—Balt. Sat. Visiter, Aug., 1846.
George Washington.—“I never mean, unless some particular circumstance should compel me to it, to possess another slave by purchase:it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.”—Letter to John F. Mercer.
“There is not a man living, who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it (Slavery); but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is, by the legislative authority; and this,as far as my suffrage will go, will not be wanting.”—Letter to Robert Morris.
John Adams.—“Great is truth—great is liberty—great is humanity; and they must and will prevail.”
Thomas Jefferson.—“The rightfulpowerof all legislation is to declare and enforceonlyourNATURAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES, andtake none of them from us. No man has a natural right tocommit aggressions on the equal rights of another, and this isALLfrom which the law ought torestrain him. Every man is under a natural duty of contributing to the necessities of society, and this is all the law should enforce upon him. When the laws have declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled their functions.”—“The idea is quite unfounded, that on entering into society,we give up any natural right.”
“The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. * * And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the others, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the love of country of the other. For, if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labor for another. * * And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people, that these liberties are the gift of God; that they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; and that his justice cannot sleep forever. * * When the measure of the slaves’ tears shall be full; when their tears shall have involved heaven itself in darkness; doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing light and liberality among their oppressors, or, at length by his exterminating thunder, manifest his attention to things of the world, and that they are not left to the guidance of blind fatality.”—Notes on Virginia.
James Madison.—“It seemed now to be pretty well understood, that the real difference of interests lay, not between the large and small, but between the Northern and Southern States. The institution of slavery, and its consequences, formed the line of discrimination.”—Speech in the Convention for the formation of the Federal Constitution.
James Monroe.—“We have found that this evil (slavery) has preyed upon the very vitals of the Union; and has been prejudicial to all the States in which it has existed.”—Speech in the Virginia Convention.
John Q. Adams.—“Nay, I may go further, and insist that that (the slave) representation has ever been, in fact,the ruling power of this government.The history of the Union has afforded a continual proof that this representation of property, which they enjoy, has secured to the slaveholding States the control of the national policy, and, almost without exception, the possession of the highest executive office of the Union.”—Speech in Congress, Feb. 4, 1833.
“Fellow citizens: The numbers of freemen constituting your nation are much greater than those of the slaveholding States, bond and free. You have at least three-fifths of the whole population of the Union. Your influence on the legislation and the administration of the government ought to be in proportion of three to two. But how stands the fact? * * * By means of the double representation, the minority command the whole, and aknot of slaveholders give the law and prescribe the policy of the country.”—Speech at North Bridgewater, Nov. 6, 1844.
James K. Polk.—On the 12th of May, 1841, a resolution was introduced in Congress, to the effect, “That the President of the United States be requested to renew, and to prosecute, from time to time, such negotiations with the several maritime powers of Europe and America, as he may deem expedientfor the effectual abolition of the African Slave Trade, and its ultimate denunciation aspiracyunder the law of nations, by the consent of the civilized world.” The vote on this resolution was 118 ayes and 32 nays;James K. Polk voting in the negative. (Cong. Deb. vol. 7., p. 850). Mr. Polk, since occupying the presidency, has pardoned two individuals, convicted in the courts of having been engaged in this trade.