20 violence by which they have sought to crush every voice that has been raised against Slavery, 2. Here is another illustration of a different character. Free persons of color, citizens of Massachusetts, and, according to the institutions of this Commonwealth, entitled to equal privileges with other citizens, being in service as mariners, and touching at the port of Charleston, in South Carolina, have been seized, and with no allegation against, them, except of entering this port in the discharge of their rightful business, have been cast into prison, and there detained during the delay of the vessel. This is by virtue-of a statute of South Carolina, passed in 1823, which further declares, that in fhe failure of the captain to pay the expenses, these freemen “ shall be seized and taken as absolute slaves,” one moiety of the proceeds of their sale to belong to the Sheriff. Against all remonstrance—against the official opinion of Mr. Wirt, as Attorney General of the United States, declaring it unconstitutional—against the solemn judgment of Mr. Justice Johnson, of the Supreme Court of the United States, himself a Slave-master and citizen of South Carolina, also pronouncing it unconstitutional— this statute, which is an o.bvious injury to Northern ship-owners, as it is an outrage to the mariners whom it seizes, has been upheld to this day by South Carolina. But this is not all. Massachusetts, in order to obtain for her citizens that protection which was denied, and especially to save them frqpi the dread penalty of being sold into Slavery, appointed a citizen of South Carolina to act as her agent for this purpose, and to bring suits in the Circuit Court of the United States in order to try the constitutionality of this pretension. Owing to the sensibility of the people in that State, this agent declined to render this simple service. Massachusetts next selected one of her own sons, a venerable citizen, who had already served with honor in the other House of Congress, and who was of admitted eminence as a lawyer, the Hon. Samuel Hoar, of Concord, to visit Charleston, and to do what the agent first appointed had shrunk from doing. This excellent gentleman, beloved by all who knew him, gentle in manners as he was firm in character, and with a countenance that was in itself a letter of recommendation, arrived at Charleston, accompanied only by his daughter. Straightway all South Carolina was convulsed. According to a story in Boswell’s Johnson, all the inhabitants at St. Kilda, a remote island of the Hebrides, on the approach of a stranger, “ catch cold ; ” but in South Carolina it is a fever that they “catch.” The Governor at the time, who was none other than one of her present Senators, [Mr. Hammond,] made his arrival the subject of a special message to the Legislature, which I now have before me ; the Legislature all “ caught” the fever, and swiftly adopted resolutions calling upon “his Excelthe latter lives in his eloquent brother, the Representative from Illinois in the other House. Thus does Slavery show its natural influence even at a distance. Nor in the Slave States is this spirit confined to the outbreaks of mere lawlessness. Too strong for restraint, it finds no limitations except in its own barbarous will. The Government becomes its tool, and in official acts does its bidding. .Here again the instances are numerous. I might dwell on the degradation of the Post Office, when its official head consented that, for the sake of Slavery, the mails themselves should be rifled. I might dwell also on the cruel persecution of Free Persons of color who in the Slave States generally, and even here in the District of Columbia, are not allowed to testify where a white man is in question, and who now in. several States are menaced by legislative act with the alternative of expulsion from their homes or of reduction to Slavery. But I pass at once to two illustrative transactions, which, as a son of. Massachusetts, I cannot forget. 1. The first relates to a citizen, of purest life and perfect integrity, whose name is destined to fill a conspicuous place in the history of Freedom, William Lloyd Garrison. Born in Massachusetts, bred to the same profession with Benjamin Franklin, and like his great predecessor becoming an editor, he saw with instinctive clearness the wrong of Slavery, and at a period when the ardors of the Missouri Question had given way to indifference throughoutthe North, he stepped forward to denounce it. The jail at Baltimore, where he then resided, was his earliest reward. Afterwards, January 1st, 1831, he published the first number of the Liberator, inscribing for his motto an utterance’of Christian philanthropy, “ My country is the world, my countrymen are all mankind,” and declaring in the face of surrounding apathy, “ I am in earnest. I will not equivocate, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.” In this sublime spirit he commenced his labors for the Slave, proposing no intervention by Congress in the States, and on well-considered principle avoiding all appeals to the bondmen themselves. Such was his simple and thoroughly constitutional position, when, before the expiration of the first year, the Legislature of Georgia, by solemn act’, a copy of which I have now before me, “approved” by Wilson Lumpkin, Governor, appropriated $5,000 “ to be paid to any person who shall arrest, bring to trial, and prosecute to conviction under the laws of this State, the editor or publisher of a. certain paper called the Liberator, published at the town of Boston and State of Massachusetts.” This infamous legislative act touching a person absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of Georgia, and in no way amenable to its laws, constituted a plain bribe to the gangs of kidnappers engendered by Slavery. With this barefaced defiance of justice and decency Slave-masters inaugurated the system of
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