Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

Now, here, gentlemen, are four distinct legal provisions, all designed to protect slave property. By these provisions, four distinct legal offences are created. The law, by creating and defining these offences, has authoritatively declared that one of them is not either of the others of them. “Stealing” is one thing. “Counselling, hiring,” &c., a man to steal, is not stealing itself. “Enticing and persuading” a slave to run away from his master is not stealing. “Transporting” a slave out of the jurisdiction is not stealing. The inquiry for you, therefore, is whether the prisoner is guilty of any of these offences, and if of any, then, of which.

Now, gentlemen, let me take advantage of a map which is lying here accidentally before me, to illustrate this case. Four states,--Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, are here represented. The boundaries between them are distinctly marked. Pennsylvania is not Maryland, nor either of the others. Maryland is not Virginia, nor either of the others; and so of the rest. Just so it is with the offences created by these statutes. Any one of them is not either of the others. It is as plain that the offence of “transporting” a slave out of the jurisdiction is as different from the offence of stealing a slave, as this geographical shape of Maryland is different from this geographical shape of Pennsylvania. As, therefore, if the geographical metes and bounds of the State of Maryland were shown to you, you could not say, upon your oaths, that it was a description of the State of Pennsylvania; so, if the offence of “transporting” be proved to you, you cannot say, on your oaths, that it is the offence of stealing.

Or take an illustration from other things. The object of a sun-dial, a watch, a clock, and a chronometer is the same. All are made for the measurement of time, as all these laws were made for the protection of slave property. But could you, therefore, on your oaths, convict a man of stealing a chronometer, when he had only taken a clock or a watch? No, you could find him guilty only of the thing proved to have been done.

Or, again, suppose a law should be made to protect a man’s property in his books; and the stealing of books, generally, should be punishable by five years’ confinement in the penitentiary. Such a general law would include all books. Suppose a subsequent law should inflict a lighter penalty for stealing an octavo volume, and a still lighter one for a duodecimo. Then it would be necessary, in an indictment, to set out the kind of book stolen, and no man could be lawfully punished for the weightier offence who had only committed the lighter. So here, the first law punished “stealing,” the next “enticing,” and the next “transporting.”

Now, gentlemen, I maintain that, at most, nothing but the offence of “transporting” has been proved against this prisoner. But he is arraigned for _stealing_. What then, let us inquire, are the ingredients which constitute the offence of stealing,--which are indispensable to its perpetration? They are, 1. That the property shall be taken by the thief from the possession of the owner. 2. That it shall be taken into the possession of the thief,--that is, that the taker shall exercise some act of control or ownership over it. And, 3. That this taking by the thief, from the possession of the owner, and into his own possession, shall be for the felonious purpose of converting the said property to his own use.

Now, I think it is not too much to say, that neither one of these three indispensable ingredients of larceny has been proved in this case.

1. It is not proved that the prisoner took the two slaves mentioned in the indictment _from the possession_ of Andrew Hoover. Could not some other person besides the prisoner have put it into the heads of these slaves to leave their master? There are white men in this city hostile to the institution of slavery, and desiring the freedom of all slaves. Could they not have said to Hoover’s slaves, “Here is a schooner at the wharf; it is to sail at such a time; be there, and you may escape to a free state”? Here, too, are thousands of free negroes, or colored persons, in this District, with whom the slaves are in daily and open communication. Could they not have infused into the mind of these slaves the idea of liberty? Is it not a thousand times more probable that it was done by some citizen in the District, or by some colored acquaintance or friend of theirs, enjoying the means of constant communication with them, than that it was done by an entire stranger to them, as the prisoner was? Can aught be conceived more absurd or preposterous than that the prisoner should go round the streets of Washington, picking up a slave here and there, to complete his cargo, as the driver of a stage-coach goes round picking up passengers? Should he accost a colored man in the streets, and ask him if he were a slave, the chances are three to one that the person addressed would turn out to be a freeman; for I suppose the proportion, in this District, of the free colored persons to the slaves to be as great as this. If the fourth man or woman he might meet should prove to be a slave, how could he know but what he might be addressing one so attached to the place, to his home and relatives, and to his master, that even the sweets of freedom would not tempt him to leave; and that the consequence would be an immediate reporting of the interview, and sudden detection and punishment? But a person on the spot would know who were slaves, and what slaves were discontented with their condition; he could select the occasion when a slave had been punished by his master, when his body was smarting, and his mind was fired with indignation against him, and then sow the seeds of discontent and the hopes of escape in a fruitful soil. If, then, the slaves were, in fact, instigated to leave their master’s possession, the probabilities are a thousand to one that they were so instigated by some other person or persons resident here, and not by the prisoner. If this were so, and they came on board the prisoner’s schooner, after having absconded from their master, then he did not take them from Hoover’s possession, and so is not guilty of the first ingredient in the crime of larceny.

But is there not still another way in which slaves may be induced to leave the possession of their master? Though we may call men slaves, yet are they not human beings?--degraded from the natural dignity of manhood, it is true, and dwarfed in their mental stature, but still human beings; subject to the passions of our common nature, animated by its hopes, inflamed by its resentments, and shrinking and flying through fear from the uplifted rod. As human beings, could not the desire of escape from their master’s possession have originated with themselves?--prompted by the inward and instinctive longings for liberty, which spring perennial in the human breast.

The attorney for the government, in his opening, dwelt long and earnestly on the value of this species of property. He described it as the most valuable kind of property known in the District, and therefore most vigilantly to be guarded. Doubtless it has a certain pecuniary value; and, as it increases in intelligence, activity, and skill, its value is greatly enhanced. But with this enhanced value comes a _per contra_. With increased intelligence and mental development, the desires natural to manhood spring up;--the longing for liberty, and for the possession of free agency; the desire of selecting one’s own field of labor, and means of enjoyment; the desire of commanding the rewards of one’s own toil. So that, as the value of a slave increases, the strength of the tenure by which he is held becomes less secure. It is a weight of gold suspended by a cord. The master wishes to increase the mass. He adds little by little, until the weight snaps the cord, and he loses the whole.

Hoover says he had been offered $1400 for the two slaves mentioned in the indictment, and had refused the offer. Their services were probably worth to him a dollar a day each. One of them was employed in driving a cart about the city. As he saw a handful of money paid to his master every week, or every month, for his own earnings, think you he never asked himself, why that money could not be his? When three out of every four colored men whom he met, from day to day, were receiving their own earnings, and making those earnings minister to their comforts and their pleasures, might not Hoover’s slaves have said, “Why are not our earnings our own? and, if we cannot possess them here, why should we not go to a country where the laborer is deemed, in the language of Scripture, to be worthy of his hire?” and so have fled of their own accord? for, though we are prone to apply the precepts of the gospel to others rather than to ourselves, yet this is a passage which they would be likely to take home.

But this is not all, gentlemen. In this capital of a nation so boastful of its freedom, the common air is vocal with the accents of liberty. Many of the colored people can read. Who knows but some of them have read the Declaration of American Independence; and, _in their blindness and simplicity of mind_, applied its immortal truths to themselves? “All men are created equal!” and among their “inalienable rights” “are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness!” Who knows but that they may have seen these doctrines, with a constellation of names subscribed to them as glorious as any that ever shone in history’s firmament? If such ideas once got possession of a man’s mind, do you think that fire or water could ever burn them or drown them out? Those who cannot read, can hear; and if you are to keep from them the perpetually recurring sights and sounds which must awaken the quick instincts of liberty, you must extinguish their eyes, and seal up their ears in everlasting silence. The last spring was one of peculiar “refreshing” to the ardent lovers of liberty. The recent events of Europe were the theme of every tongue. Not only in the market-place, in the street, and in after-dinner conversations, was the emancipation of Europe the subject of discussion, but stormy eloquence rushed forth from the capital of the nation, like winds from the cave of Æolus, and roared and raved till all but the dead must have heard it. Nay, more, gentlemen, one of the witnesses identified the day when the defendant’s schooner, the Pearl, came to anchor in the waters of this city, because he remembered it as the day of the “torchlight procession.” And what was the “torchlight procession”? You all know;--drums beating, music playing, bonfires blazing, the house of the President and of high official dignitaries illuminated, the trees of the avenue fancifully lighted up with many-colored lanterns; men, women, children, and slaves, all out, and all agog to see and to hear of the wonderful things which “liberty” had done, or had _not_ done, on the other side of the Atlantic. There, too, moved in long procession men who were elected for the occasion, from among the nation’s elect,--heads of departments, senators, and representatives,--men distended almost to bursting with eloquence for regenerated Europe, who must speak or die! They marched to an open space on Pennsylvania Avenue, where, on an extempore rostrum, they eased themselves of their repletion of patriotism; while people of all kinds, conditions, and colors stood below, empty and agape, to receive what the upper divinities might send down. And now let me read to you, gentlemen of the jury, some of the precious things that were said on that memorable evening,--only two nights before the escape of the slaves in the schooner Pearl,--and see, after you have tasted of the yeast, if you can wonder at the fermentation:--

“----Events which hold out _to the whole family of man_ so bright a promise of _the universal establishment of_ CIVIL _and religious liberty_, and the general destruction of monarchical power throughout the world.”

“New and endearing ties”--“between the people of liberated France, and _the twenty millions of freemen_ who dwell, in all the plenitude of social and political happiness, between the great seas which water the eastern and western shores of this vast continent.”

“I feel authorized to declare that there is _not one_ in this vast multitude whose sympathies are not deeply enkindled in behalf of France and Frenchmen.”

“----Such has been the extraordinary course of events in France, and in Europe, within the last two months, that the more deliberately we survey the scene which has been spread out before us, and the more rigidly we scrutinize the conduct of its actors, the more confident does our conviction become that the _glorious work_ which has been so well begun cannot possibly fail of complete accomplishment; that the age of TYRANTS AND SLAVERY is rapidly drawing to a close; and that the happy period to be signalized by the _universal emancipation of man_ from the _fetters of civil oppression_, and the recognition _in all countries_ of the great principles of _popular sovereignty, equality, and_ BROTHERHOOD, is, at this moment, visibly commencing.”

[Here Judge CRAWFORD broke in, with great sharpness, and said, “Mr. MANN, such inflammatory language cannot be allowed in this court. We have institutions that may be endangered by it. The court thinks it its duty to interfere. The counsel cannot be allowed to proceed with such inflammatory language.”

Mr. CARLISLE here rose, and, for the space of ten or fifteen minutes, with the crowded audience hushed to a grave-like silence, he interspersed resistless logic with noble sentiments, in a strain of eloquence rarely, if ever, surpassed. He vindicated every word his colleague had said, both as to matter and manner, and obtested Heaven to preserve American tribunals of justice from following the examples of the worst times of English judicial tyranny, when the basest minions of the crown were elevated to the bench, that they might overawe and abash counsel in their defence of prisoners whom the king had foredoomed to punishment.

Judge CRAWFORD. (Trembling with emotion.) Mr. MANN’S course of argument was perfectly legitimate. It was the inflammatory language that I objected to. It was the language, and not the argument, that was objectionable.]

Mr. MANN. Gentlemen of the jury, as the interdict against the line of argument I was pursuing,--now acknowledged to be just and proper,--has been withdrawn, I take it up where I left it, and proceed.

Mr. KEY, district attorney. I demand to know from what paper the gentleman reads.

Mr. MANN. (Holding up the paper and pointing to its heading.) From Mr. Ritchie’s Washington Union, of April 20th. Isn’t that good authority on this subject?

Mr. KEY. From whose speech does the gentleman read?

Mr. MANN. From the speech of the Hon. Henry S. Foote, a senator in Congress from the State of Mississippi.

Mr. KEY. The gentleman cannot read a paper to the jury, unless he expects to prove it.

Mr. MANN. I deny that as a principle; but, if required, will call Mr. Foote to swear to his speech.

Judge CRAWFORD. Mr. Mann knows Mr. Foote did not mean his language for _our_ slaves. (A suppressed laugh around the bar.)

Mr. MANN. May it please your honor, while nothing, on the one hand, will ever deter me from doing my duty to a client, yet, on the other hand, I am moved to say that I have been trained from my youth to such respect for a court of justice, that I would say nothing to it or before it which should not be fitting and appropriate, as apples of gold in pictures of silver. Let me then restate my argument, that we may see whether, and by whom, this rule has been departed from. I reiterate, then, if slaves are property, they are a peculiar kind of property. They are instinct with the common desires of humanity, and among them one of the deepest and strongest is the love of liberty. And just in proportion as their value is increased by intelligence and development, just in that proportion is the bond weakened by which they are held. In all places slaves hear something, but in this place they hear much, of what is said in behalf of human liberty and of human rights. If they hear this, and are above the condition of brutes, they will apply it to themselves. Every Fourth of July oration, if understood, is a torch to light up another St. Domingo. If they hear the word “_slave_” used in reference to those who have been deprived of their natural rights in other countries, they will apply that word to their own condition in this. If they hear the word “_tyrants_” used in reference to one who deprives others of their rights, for “_tyrants_” they will read “_masters_;” and no mortal power, or law, or art, can help it, but by blotting out all that is human within them. The slaves in this city are constantly hearing what must remind them that they are slaves; and therefore they are constantly incited to escape from their bondage. The torchlight procession, with its speeches and parade, was _one_ among ten thousand of these incitements. The slaves, therefore, who went on board the Pearl, might have obtained the idea of escape from some other person than from the prisoner,--from some orator who lays down rules for the meridian of Europe, which do not quite suit the meridian of America. Hence they might have gone and applied to the prisoner for a passage. To this he might have assented. And if so, then his offence can be nothing beyond the offence of “transporting,” and is not the offence of _stealing_, as charged in this indictment.

And, as to the inflammatory language which the court charges me with having used: every word which was uttered by me, and which the court characterizes and denounces as “inflammatory,” and thinks not proper to be spoken in this court room, because it may endanger the institutions of this city, was the exact language of the Hon. Mr. Foote, senator in Congress from the State of Mississippi, uttered by him from the rostrum, on Pennsylvania Avenue, the most public place in this city, on the evening of the 13th of April last, to thousands of people there assembled, men, women, children, negroes and all.

I had marked, may it please the court, several other passages,--for this purpose most pungent and piercing,--in the speeches of that evening, to be read on this occasion; but as I think both court and jury are already pretty well apprised of the pertinency and force of my argument under this head, I shall content myself with reading one passage more. It is from the speech of the Hon. Frederick P. Staunton, representative in Congress from Tennessee, delivered on the same occasion, and printed in the same paper:--

“It has been truly said here this evening, that our example has been of essential service to France. Who can doubt it? How different would have been the struggle for liberty to be secured by republicanism, if there had been no example of a stable republican government to which the patriot could point, for the encouragement of his people! It is said we are propagandists. We do not, indeed, propagate our principles with the sword of power; but there is one sense in which we are propagandists. We cannot help being so. Our example is contagious. In the section of this great country where I live, on the banks of the mighty Mississippi river, we have the true emblem of the tree of liberty. There you may see the giant cottonwood spreading his branches widely to the winds of heaven. Sometimes the current lays bare his roots, and you behold them extending far around and penetrating to an immense depth in the soil. When the season of maturity comes, the air is filled with a cotton-like substance, which floats in every direction, bearing, on its light wings, the living seeds of the mighty tree. They lodge upon every bank of sand which emerges from the bosom of the receding tide, and soon a young forest is seen to lift its head from the surface of the barren waste. Thus the seeds of freedom have emanated from the tree of our liberties. They fill the air. They are wafted to every part of the habitable globe. And even in the barren sands of tyranny they are destined to take root. The tree of liberty will spring up every where, and nations shall recline in its shade.”

And thus, gentlemen of the jury, I say that while some of the seeds of liberty which we scatter are wafted to a foreign realm, and fall upon a foreign soil, others will drop upon the hearts of bondmen and bondwomen at home, and will there fructify and mature into _their_ appropriate harvest.

Such, gentlemen, are the considerations that lead me to believe that the slaves found on board the schooner Pearl left the possession of their masters of their own accord, or at the private suggestion of some friend, and not at that of the prisoner; or because they were publicly incited thereto by that boastful spirit amongst us which is forever shouting the praises of liberty, while restricting the application of its principles. I therefore infer that the prisoner has not committed the act which forms the first ingredient in the offence of larceny,--the taking of property from the possession of the owner.

2. To constitute the offence of larceny, the prisoner must have taken the slaves into his own possession. Now, of this there is not a particle of evidence. For aught that appears, the slaves might have been passengers, on board his schooner, for a fare. They themselves might have paid this fare, or others might have paid it for them. In either case, they were no more in possession of the prisoner than you or I are in possession of a railroad corporation, when we travel in its cars.

3. The third question is, whether, even if the prisoner did take the slaves named in this indictment from the possession of Andrew Hoover, and into his own possession, he did so for the felonious purpose of converting them to his own use.

The act of stealing, gentlemen, springs from the impulse to acquire property, as a means of gratification. This impulse or desire to obtain the means of enjoyment is universal. The law denounces its penalties against stealing, in order to repress the excesses of this propensity, and to confine it to honest acquisitions. Hence one man may interfere with the property of another in a thousand ways, without being guilty of stealing. It is not the mere taking of another man’s property, therefore, which constitutes stealing, but the taking of it _in order to convert it to the use of the taker_, and so to save himself the labor of earning it. Hence I may take a man’s plough from his field, or his wagon from his barn, and use them temporarily; but if I return them again to the owner, it is not stealing, but only a trespass. So, according to the books, I may take a man’s horse from his stable, ride him thirty miles, in order to flee from justice, and then, if I abandon the horse, it is not stealing. It is only a trespass.

The doctrine, gentlemen, which I wish to enforce upon your minds, is, that every act of taking another man’s property is not stealing. When a wag, riding with a clergyman to church, took his sermon from his pocket, for the purpose of enjoying his embarrassment when he should get into the pulpit, and find himself in the presence of the enemy without any ammunition, such taking was not stealing; for doubtless the rogue had no intention of appropriating either the sermon or its morals to his own use.

So it is related of Sir Walter Scott, that, when he was a boy at school, he got within one of the head of his class. But the boy at the head never made a mistake, and so he stood there, as perseveringly as the letter A stands at the head of the alphabet. But Sir Walter observed that, when his classmate was reciting, his fingers always fumbled with a button on his jacket, and, watching his opportunity at their next romping on the playground, he cut off the button from his rival’s jacket; and, at the very next lesson, the boy, being disconcerted at not finding the button, missed his answer, and Sir Walter rose to the head. But surely this was not stealing.

The reason why, in each of these cases, one would not be guilty of stealing, is, that he does not mean to make the article taken his own. He gets a temporary advantage from it, but does no act that proves a design of permanent or unlimited ownership. Hence there is the broadest and most striking difference between stealing and malicious mischief. If one man takes the property of another, merely to destroy or annihilate it, out of ill will or revenge towards the owner, this is malicious mischief only, and not stealing. It is not punished as stealing. Morally, it may be as wrong,--perhaps worse than stealing itself. But this impulse which prompts to the _destruction_ of another man’s property is vastly weaker than that which leads to its _appropriation_. The latter is gratified a thousand times where the former is once, and therefore the law visits the former with the milder penalty. If taking property from its owner from revenge, and for the malicious purpose of destroying it, be not stealing, but only malicious mischief, then surely taking the property for the benevolent purpose of doing a kindness to the property itself,--as to a slave,--is not stealing.

Take an illustration. Wild animals are the property of no one. The undomesticated hares that run over my fields, the pigeons that fly over my house, or the fishes that swim in my streams, are not my property so that they can be the subjects of larceny. If a man takes them, he is liable in trespass for entering my grounds, and that is all. But if I confine hares in a warren, or pigeons in a cote, or fishes in a seine, then they are my property, and are the subjects of larceny, because I have reduced them to possession. Under such circumstances, if a man shoots or catches them for his table.--that is, to convert them to his own use,--he steals them; but if a man merely releases them from their confinement, breaks open their enclosures to let them go free, he is at most only guilty of malicious mischief. The English nobility send to France for foxes. These are caught in the Pyrenees or other mountains, brought across the English channel, and placed in the parks of noblemen preparatory to the barbarous amusement of a fox-hunt. Now, if one lord should take a fox from the park of another lord, for the pleasure of hunting him down, on his own premises, this would be stealing; but if he should only assist a fox to escape out of the park, for the benevolent purpose of restoring him to his natural liberty, this would not be stealing, but only a trespass. In such a case, the man who enlarges the fox does not do it in order to save himself the labor or expense of catching a fox; that is, he does not convert the fox to his own use.

Let me give you another illustration, which I select for the beauty of the language in which it is conveyed, and for the nobleness of the sentiments that accompany it. In the “Sentimental Journey” of Sterne, the following incident is related:--

“I was interrupted, in the heyday of this soliloquy, with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained, it could not get out. I looked up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without further attention.

“In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over, and looking up, I saw it was a starling, hung in a little cage. ‘I can’t get out, I can’t get out,’ said the starling.

“I stood looking at the bird, and to every person who came through the passage, it ran fluttering to the side which they approached, with the same lamentation of its captivity,--‘I can’t get out,’ said the starling. God help thee! said I, but I’ll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turned about the cage to get at the door. It was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it.

“The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and, thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it as if impatient. I fear, poor creature, said I, I cannot set thee at liberty. ‘No,’ said the starling, ‘I can’t get out. I can’t get out,’ said the starling.

“I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened.”

And then he bursts out into that apostrophe to Slavery, which has thrilled the hearts of all his readers in times past, and will continue to thrill the heart of every reader in all time to come:--

“Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, still thou art a bitter draught! and, though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. ’Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, LIBERTY, whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so till Nature herself shall change. No _tint_ of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chemic power turn thy sceptre into iron. With thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven! grant me but health, thou great Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy mitres, if it seems good unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are aching for them.”

Had Sterne released that bird, and sent it abroad to rejoice in its native fields of air, would his myriads of readers, who have been delighted at the story, have convicted him of _stealing_?

Now for the application. These slaves, by the law of nature, were as free as you or I. By the law and force of man, they have been subjected to bondage. If the prisoner took them, and took them either to sell them or to use them himself, then he took them, in the language of the law, for the felonious purpose of converting them to his own use; and such taking would be larceny according to the law. But if he took them for the purpose of carrying them to a free state, and of thus restoring them to their natural liberty, then he did not intend to convert them to his own use, and is not guilty of stealing.

There is another view of this case. The harshest doctrines in favor of slavery only claim, that a master has a right to the _services_ of his slave. He has not a right to his flesh and bones, so that he can cut up the former for dog’s meat, and grind the latter for compost. To constitute larceny, then, of this kind of property, the prisoner must have deprived the master of the _services_ of his slaves, with the intent, with the felonious intent, to use _those services_ himself, or to sell them to another, which would be the most effective act of use. But no evidence of any such intent has been adduced in this case. I therefore maintain, that neither of the three ingredients necessary to constitute the offence of larceny has been proved by the government.

And now, gentlemen, in closing, I will narrate to you the worst of the prisoner’s case. I will make confession for him of the length and breadth of his offence. There resides in this city a man named Daniel Bell, who was once held as a slave, but who purchased his own freedom. He had a family, consisting of his wife and eight or ten children. These were manumitted by their master, when he was brought to that most searching of all earthly tribunals,--the death bed. After the master’s decease, his heirs attempted to reclaim the property; for the living and the dying have very different views on the subject of slavery. Their ground of claim was, that the master was not of sound and disposing mind when he made the deed of manumission. But the magistrate who prepared the deed, and before whom it was executed and acknowledged, set that pretence aside by his own knowledge of the grantor’s sanity; and so the family of Bell passed as free, and were treated as free, for years. At length this magistrate died, and immediately the attempt to reduce the family to bondage was renewed. A trial was had, and through default of the now deceased magistrate’s testimony, a verdict against them was obtained. But new evidence was discovered, and one of the most respectable counsellors of this court, Joseph H. Bradley, Esq., made oath as to his belief in the sufficiency of that evidence, and moved for a new trial. It was while these proceedings were pending, in behalf of the wife and children, that they became alarmed lest they should be clandestinely sent to the south, and there be plunged into irredeemable slavery. Believing themselves free, and fearing bondage, they did send to Philadelphia for assistance, (I tell you the worst of it,) in being rescued from such a fate. This defendant, Drayton, being led also to believe that they were free, did come to assist them. Drayton might have said to himself, “Men go to assist Poles and Hungarians, and even Texans, and get glory for it; and why should I not assist free women and children in imminent danger of bondage?” He arrived here on Thursday evening, the 13th of April, and, having no other special business, prepared to sail from here, and did so sail, on Saturday evening, the 15th. Bell’s family knew the place where the defendant’s vessel was anchored, and the time fixed for its departure. Drayton, expecting to meet them there at the time appointed, was not at his vessel during the whole evening. But one thing happened which he did not expect, and had not provided against. Bell’s family had a few friends whom they thought they could take with them. They did not propose any spoiling of the Egyptians, but thought the escape of a few Israelites lawful. But these friends had _their_ friends, and they still another circle; and so, while the defendant was absent from his vessel on Saturday evening, and without his knowledge or consent, they flocked down and stowed themselves in the hold; so that,--and I say now, gentlemen, what I religiously believe to be true,--when these slaves were ordered to come on deck after the capture, the prisoner was as much astonished as any body at the number of fishes that had got into his net.

These, gentlemen, are the facts, and, as I believe, all the important facts pertaining to this case; and on these facts we claim that you must acquit the prisoner of the offence of larceny.

NOTE. This case and one or two others were tried, and, in consequence of a series of most extraordinary rulings by the court, a verdict of “_guilty_” was rendered.

Every lawyer knows that in the course of a trial, when counsel can have no time for examination or reflection, they take exceptions, wherever an objection to the decision of the judge seems probably, or even plausibly good. A clew, therefore, will be given to the course which the court pursued throughout these trials, when the fact is stated, that, on appeal to the Superior Court, _seventeen_ out of _twenty-four_ of the rulings of the judge to which exception had been taken were set aside.

The cases for larceny were remanded to be tried anew, when a verdict of “not guilty” was rendered in them all.

Drayton, the captain, and Sayres, his mate, were afterwards convicted of “transporting” the slaves, and were fined.

English, the “boy,” though indicted in one hundred and fifteen indictments, was discharged without a trial.

Part of Bell’s free family were ransomed; the rest were sold and sent to the South.

Although the facts pertaining to the mob, the repeated attempts upon Drayton’s life, the besieging of the jail, and the expulsion of Drayton’s counsel from it when engaged in his defence, all came out before the grand jury that found these scores and hundreds of indictments, and though it was notorious who some of the ringleaders of the mob were, yet no bill of indictment was ever found against any of them.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] In attendance upon the trial, and stationing themselves as near as practicable to the counsel for the defence, were men who cocked pistols and drew dirks upon Drayton, in the mob that pursued him.

LETTER

TO THE WHIG CONVENTION, (AND ALSO TO THE FREE SOIL CONVENTION, _mutatis mutandis_,) ACCEPTING THEIR RESPECTIVE NOMINATIONS FOR THE THIRTY-FIRST CONGRESS.

[_One paragraph of this Letter is omitted, as referring to a subject unconnected with the object of the present volume._]

WEST NEWTON, Sept. 23, 1848.

GENTLEMEN;

I have received with lively emotions of gratitude a copy of the resolutions passed at a district convention, held at Dedham, on the -- inst.; from one of which it appears that I was unanimously nominated by the convention, as their candidate for the Thirty-first Congress of the United States.

* * * * *

The convention you have the honor to represent was pleased to refer to my views respecting the institution of slavery. Some of these views were partly expressed in the remarks made by me in the House of Representatives, on the 30th of June last; in the letter to my constituents before referred to; and in my arguments before the _Criminal_ Court of the District of Columbia, in the “Pearl” cases. These, and kindred views, I shall improve all fitting opportunities that I may ever enjoy to enlarge upon and enforce; and had I the tongue of an angel, or the pen of inspiration, I believe I could use them on no holier theme than in kindling abhorrence at the wrongs suffered by the slave, and in melting the universal heart of humanity into pity for his lot; for I hold it to be impossible for the soul of a slave,--benighted, strangled, and buried alive as it is,--ever fully to know and feel the joys of that spiritual liberty wherewith Christ maketh his disciples free.

Be pleased, gentlemen, to accept my thanks for the very kind manner in which you have made known to me the decision of the convention you represent, and believe me,

Very truly and sincerely, yours, &c., &c.,
HORACE MANN.

SPEECH

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, FEBRUARY 23, 1849, ON SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

MR. CHAIRMAN;

There is a bill upon the speaker’s table which provides for abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia. For three successive days we have tried in vain to reach it, in the order of business. Its opponents have baffled our efforts. Our difficulty is not in carrying the bill, but in reaching it. I am not without apprehension that the last sands of this Congress will run out, without any action upon the subject. Even should the bill be taken up, it is probable that all debate upon it will be suppressed by that sovereign silencer,--the previous question. Hence I avail myself of the present opportunity, as it is probably the only one I shall have, during the present session, to submit my views upon it.

I frankly avow, in the outset, that the bill provides for one part only of an evil, whose remedy, as it seems to me, is not only the object of a reasonable desire, but of a righteous and legal demand. The bill proposes the abolition, not of slavery, but only of the slave trade, in the District of Columbia. My argument will go to show, that, within the limits of this District, slavery ought not to exist in fact, and does not exist in law.

Sir, in the first place, let us inquire what is the state of things in this District on this subject. The gentleman from Indiana, [Mr. R. W. THOMPSON,] who addressed us a few days since, used the following language:--

“What is the slave trade in the District of Columbia? I have heard a great deal said about ‘slave pens,’--about slaves sold at auction,--and about stripping the mother from the child, and the husband from the wife. These things may exist here, but I do not know of them. Since I have been in the habit of visiting the District,--which is from my boyhood,--I have never seen a negro sold here,--I have never seen a band of negroes taken off by the slave trader. I do not remember that I have ever seen the slave trader himself. I know nothing of the ‘slave pen’ that is so much talked about. It may be here, however, and these things may happen every day before the eyes of gentlemen who choose to hunt them up; but for myself, I have no taste for such things.”

Now, sir, if the gentleman means to say that he has no personal knowledge of “slave pens” and of the slave traffic in this District, that is one thing; but if he means to deny or call in question the existence of the traffic itself, or of the dens where its concentrated iniquities make up the daily employment of men, that is quite another thing. Sir, from the western front of this Capitol, from the piazza that opens out from your congressional library, as you cast your eye along the horizon and over the conspicuous objects of the landscape,--the President’s Mansion, the Smithsonian Institution, and the site of the Washington Monument, you cannot fail to see the horrid and black receptacles where human beings are penned like cattle, and kept like cattle, that they may be sold like cattle,--as strictly and literally so as oxen and swine are kept and sold at the Smithfield shambles in London, or at the cattle fair in Brighton. In a communication made during the last session, by the mayor of this city, to an honorable member of this House, _he_ acknowledges the existence of slave pens here. Up and down the beautiful river that sweeps along the western margin of the District, slavers come and go, bearing their freight of human souls to be vended in this market-place; and after they have changed hands, according to the forms of commerce, they are retransported,--the father of a family to go, perhaps, to the rice fields of South Carolina, the mother to the cotton fields of Alabama, and the children to be scattered over the sugar plantations of Louisiana or Texas.

Sir, it is notorious that the slave traders of this District advertise for slaves in the newspapers of the neighboring counties of Maryland, to be delivered in any numbers at their slave pens in this city; and that they have agents, in the city and out of it, who are engaged in supplying victims for their shambles. Since the gentleman from Indiana was elected to this Congress, and, I believe, since he took his seat in this Congress, one coffle of about sixty slaves came, chained and driven, into this city; and at about the same time another coffle of a hundred. Here they were lodged for a short period, were then sold, and went on their returnless way to the ingulfing south.

Sir, all this is done here under our own eyes, and within hearing of our own ears. All this is done now, and it has been done for fifty years,--ever since the seat of the national government was established in this place, and ever since Congress, in accordance with the constitution, has exercised “_exclusive_ legislation” over it. But the gentleman from Indiana, though accustomed to visit this District from his boyhood, has “never seen a negro sold here;”--he has “never seen a band of negroes taken off by the slave trader;” he does not remember “to have seen the slave trader himself;” he knows “nothing of the ‘slave pen’ that is so much talked about.” Sir, the eye sees, not less from the inner than from the outer light. The eye sees what the mind is disposed to recognize. The image upon the retina is nothing, if there be not an inward sense to discern it. The artist sees beauty; the philosopher sees relations of cause and effect; the benevolent man catches the slightest tone of sorrow; but the insensate heart can wade through tears and see no weeping, and can live amidst groans of anguish, and the air will be a non-conductor of the sound. I know a true anecdote of an American gentleman who walked through the streets of London with a British nobleman; and being beset at every step of the way by squalid mendicants, the American, at the end of the excursion, adverted to their having run a gantlet between beggars. “What beggars?” said his lordship; “_I have seen none_.”

But the gentleman from Indiana says, “But for myself, I have no taste for such things.” His taste explains his vision. Suppose Wilberforce and Clarkson to have had no “taste” for quelling the horrors of the African slave trade. Suppose Howard and Mrs. Fry to have had no “taste” for laying open the abominations of the prison-house, and for giving relief to the prisoner. Suppose Miss Dix to have had no “taste” for carrying solace and comfort and restoration to the insane. Suppose the Abbé L’Epée to have had no “taste” for teaching deaf mutes; or the Abbé Hauy for educating the blind; or M. Seguin and others for training idiots, and for educing docility and decency, and a love of order from those almost imperceptible germs of reason and sense, that barely distinguish them from the brutes! Suppose these things, and in what a different condition would the charities and the sufferings of the world have been! Herod had no “taste” for sparing the lives of the children of Bethlehem, and of all the coasts thereof; and doubtless he could have said, with entire truth, that he never heard the voice, in Rama, of lamentation and weeping and great mourning; nor saw, among all the mothers of Syria, any Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they were not. But, sir, just in proportion as the light of civilization and Christianity dawns upon the world, will men be found who have a “taste” for succoring the afflicted and for righting the wronged. It was the clearest proof of the Great Teacher’s mission, that he had “a taste” for going about doing good.

During the last fifty years, and especially during the last half of these fifty years, the world has made great advances in the principles of liberty. Human rights have been recognized, and their practical enjoyment, to some extent, secured. There is not a government in Europe, even the most iron and despotical of them all, that has not participated in the ameliorations which characterize the present age. A noble catalogue of rights has been wrested by the British commons from the British nobility. France and Italy have been revolutionized. Even the Pope of Rome, whose power seemed as eternal as the hills on which he was seated, has sunk under the shock. Prussia, and all the Germanic powers, with the exception of Austria, have been half revolutionized; and even the icy despotisms of Austria and Russia are forced to relent under those central fires of liberty which burn forever in the human heart, as the central fires of the earth burn forever at its core. Great Britain has abolished African slavery throughout all her realms. France has declared that any one who shall voluntarily become the owner of a slave, or shall voluntarily continue to be the owner of a slave cast upon him by bequest or inheritance, shall cease to be a citizen of France. Denmark has abolished slavery wherever it existed in her possessions. The Bey of Tunis, acting under the light of the Mahometan religion, has abolished it. The priests of Persia declare the sentiment to have come by tradition from Mahomet himself, “that the worst of men is the seller of men.” Not only all civilized nations, but the half civilized, the semi-barbarous, are acting under the guidance of the clearer light and the higher motives of our day. But there is one conspicuous exception; there is one government which closes its eyes to this increasing light; which resists the persuasion of these ennobling motives; which, on the grand subject of human liberty and human rights, is stationary and even retrogrades, while the whole world around is advancing; sleeps while all others are awaking; loves its darkness while all others are aspiring and ascending to a purer air and a brighter sky. This government, too, is the one which is most boastful and vain-glorious of its freedom; and if the humiliating truth must be spoken, this government is our own. In regard to slavery and the slave trade in this District, where we possess the power of exclusive legislation, we stand where we stood fifty years ago. Not a single ameliorating law has been passed. In practice, we are where we were then; in spirit, there are proofs that we have gone backward.

There are now on the surface of the globe two conspicuous places,--places which are attracting the gaze of the whole civilized world,--whither men and women are brought from great distances to be sold, and whence they are carried to great distances to suffer the heaviest wrongs that human nature can bear. One of these places is the coast of Africa, which is among the most pagan and benighted regions of the earth; the other is the District of Columbia, the capital and seat of government of the United States.

As far back as 1808, Congress did what it could to abolish the slave trade on the coast of Africa. In 1820 it declared the foreign slave trade to be piracy; but on the 31st of January, 1849, a bill was introduced into this House to abolish the domestic slave trade in this District,--here, in the centre and heart of the nation,--and seventy-two representatives voted against it,--voted to lay it on the table, where, as we all know, it would sleep a dreamless sleep. This was in the House of Representatives. It is well known that the Senate is still more resistant of progress than the House; and it is the opinion of many that, even if a bill should pass both House and Senate, it would receive the Executive veto. By authority of Congress, the city of Washington is the Congo of America.