Chapter IV: Of the Circumstances of This Special Case, United States Versus (5)

"Come hither, Herod the wicked! Thou that didst seek after
that young child's life, and destroyed the Innocents! Let me
look on thy face! No; go! Thou wert a heathen! Go, lie with
the Innocents thou hast massacred. Thou art too good for
this company!

"Come, Nero! Thou awful Roman Emperor! Come up! No; thou
wast drunk with power! schooled in Roman depravity. Thou
hadst, besides, the example of thy fancied gods! Go, wait
another day. I will seek a worser man.

"Come hither, St. Dominic! come, Torquemada!--Fathers of the
Inquisition! Merciless monsters, seek your equal here! No;
pass by! You are no companions for such men as these! You
were the servants of atheistic popes, of cruel kings. Go to,
and get you gone. Another time I may have work for you,--not
now; lie there and persevere to rot. You are not yet quite
wicked and corrupt enough for this comparison. Go, get ye
gone, lest the sun turn back at sight of ye!

"Come up, thou heap of wickedness, George Jeffreys!--thy
hands deep purple with the blood of thy murdered fellow men!
Ah, I know thee! awful and accursed shade! Two hundred years
after thy death, men hate thee still, not without cause! Let
me look upon thee! I know thy history. Pause and be still,
while I tell it to these men.

"Brothers, George Jeffreys 'began in the sedition line.'
'There was no act, however bad, that he would not resort to
to get on.' 'He was of a bold aspect, and cared not for the
countenance of any man.' 'He became the avowed, unblushing
slave of the court, and the bitter persecutor and
unappeasable enemy of the principles he had before
supported.' 'He was universally insolent and overbearing.'
'As a judge, he did not consider the decencies of his post,
nor did he so much as affect to be impartial, as became a
judge.' His face and voice were always unamiable. 'All
tenderness for the feelings of others, all self-respect were
obliterated from his mind.' He had 'a delight in misery,
merely as misery,' and 'that temper which tyrants require in
their worst instruments.' 'He made haste to sell his
forehead of brass and his tongue of venom to the court.' He
had 'more impudence than ten carted street-walkers;' and was
appropriately set to a work 'which could be trusted to no
man who reverenced law, or who was sensible of shame.' He
was a 'Commissioner' in 1685. You know of the 'Bloody
assizes' which he held, and how he sent to execution three
hundred and twenty persons in a single circuit. 'The whole
country was strewed with the heads and limbs of his
victims.' Yet a man wrote that 'A little more hemp might
have been usefully employed.' He was the worst of the
English judges. 'There was no measure, however illegal, to
the execution of which he did not devotedly and recklessly
abandon himself.' 'During the Stuart reigns, England was
cursed by a succession of ruffians in ermine, who, for the
sake of court favor, wrested the principles of law, the
precepts of religion, and the duties of humanity; but they
were all greatly outstripped by Jeffreys.' Such is his
history.

"Come, shade of a judicial butcher! Two hundred years thy
name has been pilloried in face of the world, and thy memory
gibbeted before mankind. Let us see how thou wilt compare
with those who kidnap men in Boston! Go seek companionship
with them! Go claim thy kindred, if such they be! Go tell
them that the memory of the wicked shall rot,--that there is
a God; an Eternity; ay! and a Judgment too! where the slave
may appeal against him that made him a slave, to Him that
made him a man.

"What! Dost thou shudder? Thou turn back! These not thy
kindred! Why dost thou turn pale, as when the crowd
clutched at thy life in London Street? It is true, George
Jeffreys, and these are not thy kin. Forgive me that I
should send thee on such an errand, or bid thee seek
companionship with such--with Boston hunters of the slave!
Thou wert not base enough! It was a great bribe that tempted
thee! Again I say, pardon me for sending thee to keep
company with such men! Thou only struckst at men accused of
crime; not at men accused only of their birth! Thou wouldst
not send a man into bondage for two pounds! I will not rank
thee with men who, in Boston, for ten dollars, would enslave
a negro now! Rest still, Herod! Be quiet, Nero! Sleep, St.
Dominic, and sleep, O Torquemada! in your fiery jail! Sleep,
Jeffreys, underneath 'the altar of the church' which seeks
with Christian charity to hide your hated bones."

"Well, my brethren, these are only the beginning of sorrows.
There will be other victims yet; this will not settle the
question. What shall we do? I think I am a calm man and a
cool man, and I have a word or two to say as to what we
shall do. Never obey the law. Keep the law of God. Next I
say, resist not evil with evil; resist not now with
violence. Why do I say this? Will you tell me that I am a
coward? Perhaps I am; at least I am not afraid to be called
one. Why do I say, then, do not now resist with violence?
Because it is not time just yet; it would not succeed. If I
had the eloquence that I sometimes dream of, which goes into
a crowd of men, and gathers them in its mighty arm, and
sways them as the pendent boughs of yonder elm shall be
shaken by the summer breeze next June, I would not give that
counsel. I would call on men, and lift up my voice like a
trumpet through the whole land, until I had gathered
millions out of the North and the South, and they should
crush slavery for ever, as the ox crushes the spider
underneath his feet. But such eloquence is given to no man.
It was not given to the ancient Greek who 'shook the arsenal
and fulmined over Greece.' He that so often held the nobles
and the mob of Rome within his hand, had it not. He that
spoke as never man spake, and who has since gathered two
hundred millions to his name, had it not. No man has it. The
ablest must wait for time! It is idle to resist here and
now. It is not the hour. If in 1765 they had attempted to
carry out the Revolution by force, they would have failed.
Had it failed, we had not been here to-day. There would have
been no little monument at Lexington 'sacred to liberty and
the rights of mankind' honoring the men who 'fell in the
cause of God and their country.' No little monument at
Concord; nor that tall pile of eloquent stone at Bunker
Hill, to proclaim that 'Resistance to tyrants is obedience
to God.' Success is due to the discretion, heroism,
calmness, and forbearance of our fathers: let us wait our
time. It will come--perhaps will need no sacrifice of
blood."[215]

[Footnote 215: 2 Parker's Occasional Sermons, p. 334-337, 343-348, 351, 352.]

Gentlemen, I think Judge Finch could construct a misdemeanor out of these words; you will find in them nothing but the plain speech of a minister of the Christian religion.

On the 6th of July, 1851, I preached "Of the three chief Safeguards of Society," and said:--

"Nowhere in the world is there a people so orderly, so much
attached to law, as the people of these Northern States. But
one law is an exception. The people of the North hate the
fugitive slave law, as they have never hated any law since
the stamp act. I know there are men in the Northern States
who like it,--who would have invented slavery, had it not
existed long before. But the mass of the Northern people
hate this law, because it is hostile to the purpose of all
just human law, hostile to the purpose of society, hostile
to the purpose of individual life; because it is hostile to
the law of God,--bids the wrong, forbids the right. We
disobey that, for the same reason that we keep other laws:
because we reverence the law of God. Why should we keep that
odious law which makes us hated wherever justice is loved?
Because we must sometimes do a disagreeable deed to
accomplish an agreeable purpose? The purpose of that law is
to enable three hundred thousand slaveholders to retake on
our soil the men they once stole on other soil! Most of the
city churches of the North seem to think that is a good
thing. Very well; is it worth while for fifteen million
freemen to transgress the plainest of natural laws, the most
obvious instincts of the human heart, and the plainest
duties of Christianity, for that purpose? The price to pay
is the religious integrity of fifteen million men; the thing
to buy is a privilege for three hundred thousand
slaveholders to use the North as a hunting field whereon to
kidnap men at our cost. Judge you of that bargain."

"I adjure you to reverence a government that is right,
statutes that are right, officers that are right; but to
disobey every thing that is wrong. I intreat you by your
love for your country, by the memory of your fathers, by
your reverence for Jesus Christ, yea, by the deep and holy
love of God which Jesus taught, and you now feel."[216]

[Footnote 216: 2 Parker's Occasional Sermons, p. 392-394.]

You will say all this is but indispensable duty; but the judge who hanged a man for treason because he promised to make his son "heir to the Crown"--meaning the "Crown Tavern" that he lived in--would doubtless find treason in my words also.

On the 12th of April, 1852, I delivered an address to commemorate the first anniversary of the Kidnapping of Thomas Sims, and said:--

"But when the rulers have inverted their function, and
enacted wickedness into a law which treads down the
unalienable rights of man to such a degree as this, then I
know no ruler but God, no law but natural Justice. I tear
the hateful statute of kidnappers to shivers; I trample it
underneath my feet. I do it in the name of all law; in the
name of Justice and of Man; in the name of the dear God."

"You remember the decision of the Circuit judge,--himself
soon to be summoned by death before the Judge who is no
respecter of persons,--not allowing the destined victim his
last hope, 'the great writ of right.' The decision left him
entirely at the mercy of the other kidnappers. The
Court-room was crowded with 'respectable people,' 'gentlemen
of property and standing:' they received the decision with
'applause and the clapping of hands.' Seize a lamb out of a
flock, a wolf from a pack of wolves, the lambs bleat with
sympathy, the wolves howl with fellowship and fear; but when
a competitor for the Presidency sends back to eternal
bondage a poor, friendless negro, asking only his limbs,
wealthy gentlemen of Boston applaud the outrage.

"'O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason!'"

"When the Fugitive Slave Bill passed, the six New England
States lay fast asleep: Massachusetts slept soundly, her
head pillowed on her unsold bales of cotton and of woollen
goods, dreaming of 'orders from the South.' Justice came to
waken her, and whisper of the peril of nine thousand
citizens; and she started in her sleep, and, being frighted,
swore a prayer or two, then slept again. But Boston
woke,--sleeping, in her shop, with ears open, and her eye on
the market, her hand on her purse, dreaming of goods for
sale,--Boston woke broadly up, and fired a hundred guns for
joy. O Boston, Boston! if thou couldst have known, in that
thine hour, the things which belong unto thy peace! But no:
they were hidden from her eyes. She had prayed to her god,
to Money; he granted her the request, but sent leanness into
her soul."

"Yet one charge has been made against the Government, which
seems to me a little harsh and unjust. It has been said the
administration preferred low and contemptible men as their
tools; judges who blink at law, advocates of infamy, and men
cast off from society for perjury, for nameless crimes, and
sins not mentionable in English speech; creatures 'not so
good as the dogs that licked Lazarus's sores; but, like
flies, still buzzing upon any thing that is raw.' There is a
semblance of justice in the charge: witness Philadelphia,
Buffalo, Boston; witness New York. It is true, for
kidnappers the Government did take men that looked 'like a
bull-dog just come to man's estate;' men whose face declared
them, 'if not the devil, at least his twin-brother.' There
are kennels of the courts wherein there settles down all
that the law breeds most foul, loathsome, and hideous and
abhorrent to the eye of day; there this contaminating puddle
gathers its noisome ooze, slowly, stealthily, continually,
agglomerating its fetid mass by spontaneous cohesion, and
sinking by the irresistible gravity of rottenness into that
abhorred deep, the lowest, ghastliest pit in all the
subterranean vaults of human sin. It is true the Government
has skimmed the top and dredged the bottom of these kennels
of the courts, taking for its purpose the scum and sediment
thereof, the Squeers, the Fagins, and the Quilps of the law,
the monsters of the court. Blame not the Government; it took
the best it could get. It was necessity, not will, which
made the selection. Such is the stuff that kidnappers must
be made of. If you wish to kill a man, it is not bread you
buy: it is poison. Some of the instruments of Government
were such as one does not often look upon. But, of old time,
an inquisitor was always 'a horrid-looking fellow, as
beseemed his trade.' It is only justice that a kidnapper
should bear 'his great commission in his look.'"

"I pity the kidnappers, the poor tools of men almost as
base. I would not hurt a hair of their heads; but I would
take the thunder of the moral world, and dash its bolted
lightning on this crime of stealing men, till the name of
kidnapping should be like Sodom and Gomorrah. It is piracy
to steal a man in Guinea; what is it to do this in Boston?

"I pity the merchants who, for their trade, were glad to
steal their countrymen; I wish them only good. Debate in
yonder hall has shown how little of humanity there is in the
trade of Boston. She looks on all the horrors which
intemperance has wrought, and daily deals in every street;
she scrutinizes the jails,--they are filled by rum; she
looks into the alms-houses, crowded full by rum; she walks
her streets, and sees the perishing classes fall, mowed down
by rum; she enters the parlors of wealthy men, looks into
the bridal chamber, and meets death: the ghosts of the slain
are there,--men slain by rum. She knows it all, yet says,
'There is an interest at stake!'--the interest of rum; let
man give way! Boston does this to-day. Last year she stole a
man; her merchants stole a man! The sacrifice of man to
money, when shall it have an end? I pity those merchants who
honor money more than man. Their gold is cankered, and their
soul is brass,--is rusted brass. They must come up before
the posterity which they affect to scorn. What voice can
plead for them before their own children? The eye that
mocketh at the justice of its son, and scorneth to obey the
mercy of its daughter, the ravens of posterity shall pick it
out, and the young eagles eat it up!

"But there is yet another tribunal: 'After the death the
judgment!' When he maketh inquisition for the blood of the
innocent, what shall the stealers of men reply? Boston
merchants, where is your brother, Thomas Sims? Let Cain
reply to Christ."[217]

[Footnote 217: 1 Parker's Additional Speeches, p. 50, 70, 88, 89, 92, 93, 100, 101.]

The Sunday after Mr. Webster's death, Oct. 31, 1852, I spoke of that powerful man; listen to this:--

"Mr. Webster stamped his foot, and broke through into the
great hollow of practical atheism, which undergulfs the
State and Church. Then what a caving in was there! The
firm-set base of northern cities quaked and yawned with
gaping rents. 'Penn's sandy foundation' shook again, and
black men fled from the city of brotherly love, as doves,
with plaintive cry, flee from a farmer's barn when summer
lightning stabs the roof. There was a twist in Faneuil Hall,
and the doors could not open wide enough for Liberty to
regain her ancient Cradle; only soldiers, greedy to steal a
man, themselves stole out and in. Ecclesiastic quicksand ran
down the hole amain. Metropolitan churches toppled, and
pitched, and canted, and cracked, their bowing walls all out
of plumb. Colleges, broken from the chain which held them in
the stream of time, rushed towards the abysmal rent. Harvard
led the way, '_Christo et Ecclesiae_' in her hand. Down
plunged Andover, 'Conscience and the Constitution' clutched
in its ancient, failing arm. New Haven began to cave in.
Doctors of Divinity, orthodox, heterodox, with only a doxy
of doubt, 'no settled opinion,' had great alacrity in
sinking, and went down quick, as live as ever, into the pit
of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, the bottomless pit of lower
law,--one with his mother, cloaked by a surplice, hid
beneath his sinister arm, and an acknowledged brother
grasped by his remaining limb. Fossils of theology, dead as
Ezekiel's bones, took to their feet again, and stood up for
most arrant wrong. 'There is no higher law of God,' quoth
they, as they went down; 'no golden rule, only the statutes
of men.' A man with mythologic ear might fancy that he heard
a snickering laugh run round the world below, snorting,
whinnying, and neighing, as it echoed from the infernal spot
pressed by the fallen monsters of ill-fame, who, thousands
of years ago, on the same errand, had plunged down the
self-same way. What tidings the echo bore, Dante nor Milton
could not tell. Let us leave that to darkness, and to
silence, and to death.

"But spite of all this, in every city, in every town, in
every college, and in each capsizing church, there were
found Faithful Men, who feared not the monster, heeded not
the stamping;--nay, some doctors of divinity were found
living. In all their houses there was light, and the
destroying angel shook them not. The word of the Lord came
in open vision to their eye; they had their lamps trimmed
and burning, their loins girt; they stood road-ready.
Liberty and Religion turned in thither, and the slave found
bread and wings. 'When my father and my mother forsake me,
then the Lord will hold me up!'

"After the 7th of March, Mr. Webster became the ally of the
worst of men, the forefront of kidnapping. The orator of
Plymouth Rock was the advocate of slavery; the hero of
Bunker Hill put chains round Boston Court House; the
applauder of Adams and Jefferson was a tool of the
slaveholder, and a keeper of slavery's dogs, the associate
of the kidnapper, and the mocker of men who loved the right.
Two years he lived with that rabble rout for company, his
name the boast of every vilest thing.

"'Oh, how unlike the place from whence he fell!'"

"Do men mourn for him? See how they mourn! The streets are
hung with black. The newspapers are sad colored. The shops
are put in mourning. The Mayor and Aldermen wear crape.
Wherever his death is made known, the public business stops,
and flags drop half-mast down. The courts adjourn. The
courts of Massachusetts--at Boston, at Dedham, at Lowell,
all adjourn; the courts of New Hampshire, of Maine, of New
York; even at Baltimore and Washington, the courts adjourn;
for the great lawyer is dead, and Justice must wait another
day. Only the United States Court, in Boston, trying a man
for helping Shadrach out of the furnace of the
kidnappers,--the court which executes the Fugitive Slave
Bill,--that does not adjourn; that keeps on; its worm dies
not, and the fire of its persecution is not quenched, when
death puts out the lamp of life! Injustice is hungry for its
prey, and must not be balked. It was very proper! Symbolical
court of the Fugitive Slave Bill--it does not respect life,
why should it death? and, scorning liberty, why should it
heed decorum?"[218]

[Footnote 218: 1 Parker's Additional Speeches, 235-37, 246-47.]

On the 12th of February, 1854, I preached "Some Thoughts on the new Assault upon Freedom in America."

"Who put Slavery in the Constitution; made it Federal? who
put it in the new States? who got new soil to plant it in?
who carried it across the Mississippi--into Louisiana,
Florida, Texas, Utah, New Mexico? who established it in the
Capital of the United States? who adopted Slavery and
volunteered to catch a runaway, in 1793, and repeated the
act in 1850,--in defiance of all law, all precedent, all
right? Why, it was the North. 'Spain armed herself with
bloodhounds,' said Mr. Pitt, 'to extirpate the wretched
natives of America.' In 1850, the Christian Democracy set
worse bloodhounds afoot to pursue Ellen Craft; offered them
five dollars for the run, if they did not take her; ten if
they did! The price of blood was Northern money; the
bloodhounds--they were Kidnappers born at the North, bred
there, kennelled in her church, fed on her sacraments,
blessed by her priests! In 1778, Mr. Pitt had a yet harsher
name for the beasts wherewith despotic Spain hunted the red
man in the woods--he called them '_Hell Hounds_.' But they
only hunted 'savages, heathens, men born in barbarous
lands.' What would he say of the pack which in 1851 hunted
American Christians, in the 'Athens of America,' and stole a
man on the grave of Hancock and Adams--all Boston looking
on, and its priests blessing the deed!"

"See what encourages the South to make new encroachments.
She has been eminently successful in her former demands,
especially with the last. The authors of the fugitive slave
bill did not think that enormity could be got through
Congress: it was too atrocious in itself, too insulting to
the North. But Northern men sprang forward to defend
it--powerful politicians supported it to the fullest extent.
The worse it was, the better they liked it. Northern
merchants were in favor of it--it 'would conciliate the
South.' Northern ministers in all the churches of commerce
baptized it, defended it out of the Old Testament, or the
New Testament. The Senator of Boston gave it his mighty
aid,--he went through the land a huckster of Slavery,
peddling Atheism: the Representative of Boston gave it his
vote. Their constituents sustained both! All the great
cities of the North executed the bill. The leading Journals
of Boston advised the merchants to withhold all commercial
intercourse from Towns which opposed Kidnapping. There was a
'Union Meeting' at Faneuil Hall. You remember the men on the
platform: the speeches are not forgotten. The doctrine that
there is a Law of God above the passions of the multitude
and the ambition of their leaders, was treated with scorn
and hooting: a loud guffaw of vulgar ribaldry went up
against the Justice of the Infinite God! All the great
cities did the same. Atheism was inaugurated as the first
principle of Republican government; in politics, religion
makes men mad! Mr. Clay declared that 'no Northern gentleman
will ever help return a fugitive Slave!' What took place at
Philadelphia? New York? Cincinnati?--nay, at Boston? The
Northern churches of commerce thought Slavery was a
blessing, Kidnapping a 'grace.' The Democrats and Whigs vie
with each other in devotion to the fugitive slave bill. The
'Compromises' are the golden rule. The North conquered her
prejudices. The South sees this, and makes another demand.
Why not? I am glad of it. She serves us right."

"In 1775, what if it had been told the men all red with
battle at Lexington and Bunker Hill,--'your sons will gird
the Court House with chains to kidnap a man; Boston will
vote for a Bill which puts the liberty of any man in the
hands of a Commissioner, to be paid twice as much for making
a Slave as for declaring a freeman; and Boston will call out
its soldiers to hunt a man through its streets!' What if on
the 19th of April, 1775, when Samuel Adams said, 'Oh! what a
glorious morning is this!' as he heard the tidings of war in
the little village where he passed the night,--what if it
had been told him,--'On the 19th of April, seventy-six years
from this day, will your City of Boston land a poor youth at
Savannah, having violated her own laws, and stained her
Magistrates' hands, in order to put an innocent man in a
Slave-master's jail?' What if it had been told him that
Ellen Craft must fly out of Democratic Boston, to Monarchic,
Theocratic, Aristocratic England, to find shelter for her
limbs, her connubial innocence, and the virtue of her
woman's heart? I think Samuel would have cursed the day in
which it was said a man-child was born, and America was
free! What if it had been told Mayhew and Belknap, that in
the pulpits of Boston, to defend kidnapping should be
counted to a man as righteousness? They could not have
believed it. They did not know what baseness could suck the
Northern breast, and still be base."[219]

[Footnote 219: 1 Parker's Additional Speeches, p. 351, 352, 357-359, 368, 369.]

You will think all this is good morality; but Mr. Curtis in 1836, maintained that kidnapping in Massachusetts, would "promote harmony and good-will where it is extremely desirable to promote it, encourage frequent intercourse, and soften prejudice by increasing acquaintance, and tend to peace and good-will." Nay, that it may be "perfectly consistent with our policy ... _to interfere actively to enable the citizens of those States_ [the slave States] _to enjoy those institutions at home_." "Slavery is not immoral;" "By the law of this Commonwealth slavery is not immoral."[220]

[Footnote 220: Med Case, p. 9, 11.]

After Commissioner Loring had kidnapped Anthony Burns, I attended the meeting at Faneuil Hall, and spoke. Gentlemen, I did not finish the speech I had begun, for news came that an attack was made on the Court House, and the meeting was thrown into confusion. I did not speak in a corner, but in the old Cradle of Liberty. Here is the report of the speech which was made by a phonographer, and published in the newspapers of the time--I have no other notes of it. You shall see if there be a misdemeanor in it. Here is the speech:--

"FELLOW-SUBJECTS OF VIRGINIA--[Loud cries of 'No,' 'no,' and 'you must take that back!'] FELLOW-CITIZENS OF BOSTON, then--['Yes,' 'yes,']--I come to condole with you at this second disgrace which is heaped on the city made illustrious by _some_ of those faces that were once so familiar to our eyes. [Alluding to the portraits which _once hung_ conspicuously in Faneuil Hall, but which had been removed to obscure and out-of-the-way locations.] Fellow-citizens--A deed which Virginia commands has been done in the city of John Hancock and the 'brace of Adamses.' It was done by a Boston hand. It was a Boston man who issued the warrant; it was a Boston Marshal who put it in execution; they are Boston men who are seeking to kidnap a citizen of Massachusetts, and send him into slavery for ever and ever. It is our fault that it is so. Eight years ago, a merchant of Boston 'kidnapped a man on the high road between Faneuil Hall and Old Quincy,' at 12 o'clock,--at the noon of day,--and the next day, mechanics of this city exhibited the half-eagles they had received for their share of the spoils in enslaving a brother man. You called a meeting in this hall. It was as crowded as it is now. I stood side by side with my friend and former neighbor, your honorable and noble Chairman to-night [George R. Russell, of West Roxbury], [Loud Cheers,] while this man who had fought for liberty in Greece, and been imprisoned for that sacred cause in the dungeons of Poland, [Dr. Samuel G. Howe,] stood here and introduced to the audience that 'old man eloquent,' John Quincy Adams. [Loud Cheers.]

"It was the last time he ever stood in Faneuil Hall. He came to defend the unalienable rights of a friendless negro slave, kidnapped in Boston. There is even no picture of John Quincy Adams to-night.

"A Suffolk Grand-Jury would find no indictment against the Boston merchant for kidnapping that man. ['Shame,' 'shame.'] If Boston had spoken then, we should not have been here to-night. We should have had no fugitive slave bill. When that bill passed, we fired a hundred guns.

"Don't you remember the Union meeting held in this very hall? A man stood on this platform,--he is a Judge of the Supreme Court now,--and he said--When a certain 'Reverend gentleman' is indicted for perjury, I should like to ask him how he will answer the charge? And when that 'Reverend gentleman' rose, and asked, 'Do you want an answer to your question?' Faneuil Hall cried out,--'No,' 'no,'--'Throw him over!' Had Faneuil Hall spoken then on the side of Truth and Freedom, we should not now be the subjects of Virginia.

"Yes, we are the vassals of Virginia. She reaches her arm over the graves of our mothers, and kidnaps men in the city of the Puritans; over the graves of Samuel Adams and John Hancock. [Cries of 'Shame!'] 'Shame!' so I say; but who is to blame? 'There is no north,' said Mr. Webster. There is none. The South goes clear up to the Canada line. No, gentlemen, there is no Boston to-day. There _was_ a Boston once. Now, there is a North suburb to the city of Alexandria,--that is what Boston is. [Laughter.] And you and I, fellow-subjects of the State of Virginia--[Cries of 'no,' 'no.' 'Take that back again.']--I will take it back when you show me the fact is not so.--Men and brothers, (brothers, at any rate,) I am not a young man; I have heard hurrahs and cheers for liberty many times; I have not seen a great many deeds done for liberty. I ask you, are we to have deeds as well as words? ['Yes,' 'yes,' and loud cheers.]

"Now, brethren, you are brothers at any rate, whether citizens of Massachusetts or subjects of Virginia--I am a minister--and, fellow-citizens of Boston, there are two great laws in this country; one of them is the LAW OF SLAVERY; that law is declared to be a 'finality.' Once the Constitution was formed 'to establish justice, promote tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.' _Now_, the Constitution is not to secure liberty; it is to extend slavery into Nebraska. And when slavery is established there, in order to show what it is, there comes a sheriff from Alexandria, to kidnap a man in the city of Boston, and he gets a Judge of Probate, in the county of Suffolk, to issue a writ, and another Boston man to execute that writ! [Cries of 'shame,' 'shame.']

"Slavery tramples on the Constitution; it treads down State Rights. Where are the Rights of Massachusetts? A fugitive slave bill Commissioner has got them all in his pocket. Where is the trial by jury? Watson Freeman has it under his Marshal's staff. Where is the great writ of personal replevin, which our fathers wrested, several hundred years ago, from the tyrants who once lorded it over Great Britain? Judge Sprague trod it under his feet! Where is the sacred right of _habeas corpus_? Deputy Marshal Riley can crush it in his hands, and Boston does not say any thing against it. Where are the laws of Massachusetts forbidding State edifices to be used as prisons for the incarceration of fugitives? They, too, are trampled underfoot. 'Slavery is a finality.'

"These men come from Virginia, to kidnap a man here. Once, this was Boston; now, it is a Northern suburb of Alexandria. At first, when they carried a fugitive slave from Boston, they thought it was a difficult thing to do it. They had to get a Mayor to help them; they had to put chains round the Court House; they had to call out the 'Sims Brigade'; it took nine days to do it. Now, they are so confident that we are subjects of Virginia, that they do not even put chains round the Court House; the police have nothing to do with it. I was told to-day that one of the officers of the city said to twenty-eight police-men, 'If any man in the employment of the city meddles in this business, he will be discharged from service, without a hearing.' [Great applause.] Well, gentlemen, how do you think they received that declaration? They shouted, and hurrahed, and gave three cheers. [Renewed applause.] My friend here would not have had the honor of presiding over you to-night, if application had been made a little sooner to the Mayor. Another gentleman told me that, when that man (the Mayor) was asked to preside at this meeting, he said that he regretted that all his time to-night was previously engaged. If he had known it earlier, he said, he might have been able to make arrangements to preside. When the man was arrested, he told the Marshal he regretted it, and that his sympathies were wholly with the slave. [Loud applause.] Fellow-citizens, remember that word. Hold your Mayor to it, and let it be seen that he has got a background and a foreground, which will authorize him to repeat that word in public, and act it out in Faneuil Hall. I say, so confident are the slave agents now, that they can carry off their slave in the daytime, that they do not put chains round the Court House; they have got no soldiers billeted in Faneuil Hall, as in 1851. They think they can carry this man off to-morrow morning in a cab. [Voices--'They can't do it.' 'Let's see them try.']

"I say, there are two great laws in this country. One is the slave law. That is the law of the President of the United States; it is the law of the Commissioner; it is the law of every Marshal, and of every meanest ruffian whom the Marshal hires to execute his behests.

"There is another law, which my friend, Mr. Phillips, has described in language such as I cannot equal, and therefore shall not try; I only state it in its plainest terms. It is the Law of the People when they are sure they are right and determined to go ahead. [Cheers and much confusion.]

"Now, gentlemen, there was a Boston once, and you and I had fathers--brave fathers; and mothers who stirred up those fathers to manly deeds. Well, gentlemen, once it came to pass that the British Parliament enacted a 'law'--_they_ called it law--issuing stamps here. What did your fathers do on that occasion? They said, in the language of Algernon Sydney, quoted in your resolutions, 'that which is not just is not law, and that which is not law ought not to be obeyed.'--[Cheers.] They did not obey the stamp act. They did not call it law, and the man that did call it a law, here, eighty years ago, would have had a very warm coat of tar and feathers on him. They called it an 'act,' and they took the Commissioner who was here to execute it, took him solemnly, manfully,--_they didn't hurt a hair of his head_; they were non-resistants, of a very potent sort, [Cheers,]--and made him take a solemn oath that he would not issue a single stamp. He was brother-in-law of the Governor of the State, the servant of a royal master, 'exceedingly respectable,' of great wealth, and once very popular; but they took him, and made him swear not to execute his commission; and he kept his oath, and the stamp act went to its own place, and you know what that was. [Cheers.] That was an instance of the people going behind a wicked law to enact Absolute Justice into their statute, and making it Common Law. You know what they did with the tea.

"Well, gentlemen, in the South there is a public opinion, it is a very wicked public opinion, which is stronger than law. When a colored seaman goes to Charleston from Boston, he is clapped instantly into jail, and kept there until the vessel is ready to sail, and the Boston merchant or master must pay the bill, and the Boston black man must feel the smart. That is a wicked example, set by the State of South Carolina. When Mr. Hoar, one of our most honored and respected fellow-citizens, was sent to Charleston to test the legality of this iniquitous law, the citizens of Charleston ordered him off the premises, and he was glad to escape to save himself from further outrage. There was no violence, no guns fired. That was an instance of the strength of public opinion--of a most unjust and iniquitous public opinion."

* * * * *

"Well, gentlemen, I say there is one law--slave law; it is everywhere. There is another law, which also is a finality; and that law, it is in your hands and your arms, and you can put it in execution, just when you see fit.

"Gentlemen, I am a clergyman and a man of peace; I love peace. But there is a means, and there is an end; Liberty is the end, and sometimes peace is not the means towards it. [Applause.] Now, I want to ask you what you are going to do. [A voice--'shoot, shoot.'] There are ways of managing this matter without shooting anybody. Be sure that these men who have kidnapped a man in Boston, are cowards, every mother's son of them; and if we stand up there resolutely, and declare that this man shall not go out of the city of Boston, _without shooting a gun_--[cries of 'that's it,' and great applause,]--then he won't go back. Now, I am going to propose that when you adjourn, it be to meet at _Court Square, to-morrow morning at nine o'clock_. As many as are in favor of that motion will raise their hands. [A large number of hands were raised, but many voices cried out, 'Let's go to-night,' 'let's pay a visit to the slave-catchers at the Revere House,' etc. 'Put that question.'] Do you propose to go to the Revere House to-night, then show your hands. [Some hands were held up.] It is not a vote. We shall meet at _Court Square, at nine o'clock to-morrow morning_."

* * * * *

On the following Sunday, May 28, in place of the usual Scripture passages, I extemporized the following "Lesson for the Day," which on Monday appeared in the newspapers:--

"Since last we came together, there has been a man stolen in the city of our fathers. It is not the first; it may not be the last. He is now in the great slave-pen in the city of Boston. He is there against the law of the Commonwealth, which, if I am rightly informed, in such cases prohibits the use of State edifices as United States jails."

"A man has been killed by violence. Some say he was killed by his own coadjutors: I can easily believe it; there is evidence enough that they were greatly frightened. They were not United States soldiers, but volunteers from the streets of Boston, who, for their pay, went into the Court House to assist in kidnapping a brother man. They were so cowardly that they could not use the simple cutlasses they had in their hands, but smote right and left, like ignorant and frightened ruffians as they are. They may have slain their brother or not--I cannot tell."

"Why is Boston in this confusion to-day? The fugitive slave bill Commissioner has just now been sowing the wind, that we may reap the whirlwind. The old fugitive slave bill Commissioner stands back; he has gone to look after his 'personal popularity.' But when Commissioner Curtis does not dare appear in this matter, another man comes forward, and for the first time seeks to kidnap his man also in the city of Boston."

"But he has sown the wind, and we are reaping the whirlwind. All this confusion is his work. He knew he was stealing a Man born with the same unalienable right to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' as himself. He knew the slaveholders had no more right to Anthony Burns than to his own daughter. He knew the consequences of stealing a man. He knew that there are men in Boston who have not yet conquered their prejudices--men who respect the Higher Law of God. He knew there would be a meeting at Faneuil Hall, gatherings in the streets. He knew there would be violence."

"Edward Greeley Loring, Judge of Probate for the County of Suffolk, in the State of Massachusetts, fugitive slave bill Commissioner of the United States, before these citizens of Boston, on Ascension Sunday, assembled to worship God, I charge you with the death of that man who was killed on last Friday night. He was your fellow-servant in kidnapping. He dies at your hand. You fired the shot which makes his wife a widow, his child an orphan. I charge you with the peril of twelve men, arrested for murder, and on trial for their lives. I charge you with filling the Court House with one hundred and eighty-four hired ruffians of the United States, and alarming not only this city for her liberties that are in peril, but stirring up the whole Commonwealth of Massachusetts with indignation, which no man knows how to stop--which no man can stop. You have done it all!"[221]

[Footnote 221: 2 Parker's Additional, 74, 75, 81, 83.]

June 4th, I preached "of the New Crime against Humanity," and said:--

"Wednesday, the 24th of May, the city was all calm and still. The poor black man was at work with one of his own nation, earning an honest livelihood. A Judge of Probate, Boston born and Boston bred, a man in easy circumstances, a Professor in Harvard College, was sitting in his office, and with a single spurt of his pen he dashes off the liberty of a man--a citizen of Massachusetts. He kidnaps a man endowed by his Creator with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He leaves the writ with the Marshal, and goes home to his family, caresses his children, and enjoys his cigar. The frivolous smoke curls round his frivolous head, and at length he lays him down to sleep, and, I suppose, such dreams as haunt such heads. But when he wakes next morn, all the winds of indignation, wrath, and honest scorn, are let loose. Before night, they are blowing all over this commonwealth--ay, before another night they have gone to the Mississippi, and wherever the lightning messenger can tell the tale. So have I read in an old mediaeval legend that one summer afternoon, there came up a 'shape, all hot from Tartarus,' from hell below, but garmented and garbed to represent a civil-suited man, masked with humanity. He walked quiet and decorous through Milan's stately streets, and scattered from his hand an invisible dust. It touched the walls; it lay on the streets; it ascended to the cross on the minster's utmost top. It went down to the beggar's den. Peacefully he walked through the streets, vanished and went home. But the next morning, the pestilence was in Milan, and ere a week had sped half her population were in their graves; and half the other half, crying that hell was clutching at their hearts, fled from the reeking City of the Plague!"

"I have studied the records of crime--it is a part of my ministry. I do not find that any College Professor has ever been hanged for murder in all the Anglo-Saxon family of men, till Harvard College had that solitary shame. Is not that enough? Now she is the first to have a Professor that kidnaps men. 'The Athens of America' furnished both!

"I can understand how a man commits a crime of passion, or covetousness, or rage, nay, of revenge, or of ambition. But for a man in Boston, with no passion, no covetousness, no rage, with no ambition nor revenge, to steal a poor negro, to send him into bondage,--I cannot comprehend the fact. I can understand the consciousness of a lion, not a kidnapper's heart."

"But there is another court. The Empsons and the Dudleys have been summoned there before: Jeffreys and Scroggs, the Kanes, and the Curtises, and the Lorings, must one day travel the same unwelcome road. Imagine the scene after man's mythological way. 'Edward, where is thy brother, Anthony?' 'I know not; am I my brother's keeper, Lord?' 'Edward, where is thy brother, Anthony?' 'Oh, Lord, he was friendless, and so I smote him; he was poor, and I starved him of more than life. He owned nothing but his African body. I took that away from him, and gave it to another man!'

"Then listen to the voice of the Crucified--'Did I not tell thee, when on earth, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy understanding and thy heart?"' 'But I thought thy kingdom was not of this world.'

"'Did I not tell thee that thou shouldst love thy neighbor as thyself? Where is Anthony, thy brother? I was a stranger, and you sought my life; naked, and you rent away my skin; in prison, and you delivered me to the tormentors--fate far worse than death. Inasmuch as you did it to Anthony Burns, you did it unto me.'"[222]

[Footnote 222: Parker's Additional, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172.]

* * * * *

Gentlemen, I suppose the honorable Judge had the last three addresses in his mind while concocting his charge to the Grand-Jury which refused to find a bill. I infer this partly from what took place in the room of the next Grand-Jury which found this indictment, and partly also from another source which you will look at for a moment.

I preach on Sundays in the Music Hall, which is owned by a Corporation who rent it to the 28th Congregational Society for their religious meetings. Mr. Charles P. Curtis, father-in-law of the Hon. Judge Curtis, and step-brother of Commissioner Loring, and a more distant relation but intimate friend of George T. Curtis, was then president of that Corporation, and one of its directors. At a meeting of the corporation, held presently after the kidnapping of Mr. Burns, Mr. Charles P. Curtis and his family endeavored to procure a vote of the Corporation to instruct the directors "to terminate the lease of the 28th Congregational Society as soon as it can be legally done, and not to renew it." Mr. Charles P. Curtis managed this matter clandestinely, but not with his usual adroitness, for at the meeting he disclosed the cause of his act,--that _Mr. Parker had called his brother a murderer_, probably referring to the passage just read from the "Lesson for the Day." But he took nothing by that motion.[223]

[Footnote 223: See the communications of Messrs. Chas. P. Curtis and Thomas B. Curtis, in the Boston Daily Advertiser of June, 1854; and the other articles setting forth the facts of the case.]

What influence this private and familistic disposition had in framing the Judge's charge, I leave it for you and the People of America to determine. You also can conjecture whether it had any effect on Mr. Greenough, the other son-in-law of Mr. Charles P. Curtis, who refused to return my salutation, and who, "by a miracle," was put on the new Grand-Jury after the old one was discharged, and then was so "very anxious to procure an indictment" against me. I leave all that with you. You can easily appreciate the efforts made to silence not only my Sunday preaching, but also the magnificent eloquence of Wendell Phillips; yes, to choke all generous speech, in order that kidnappers might pursue their vocation with none to molest or make them afraid.

But, Gentlemen, I fear you do not yet quite understand the arrogance of our Southern masters, and the fear and hatred they bear towards all who dare speak a word in behalf of the Rights of outraged Humanity. The gag-law of Congress which silenced the House of Representatives till John Quincy Adams, that noble son of a noble sire, burst through the Southern chain; the violation of the United States mails to detect "incendiary publications;" the torturing of men and women for an opinion against Slavery--all these are notorious; but they and all that I have yet stated of the action of the Federal Courts in the fugitive slave bill cases, with the "opinions" of Northern Judges already mentioned, do not fill up the cup of bitterness and poison which is to be poured down our throats. Let me, therefore, here give you one supplementary piece of evidence to prove how intensely the South hates the Northern Freedom of Speech. I purposely select this case from a period when Southern arrogance and Northern servility were far less infamous than now.

About twenty years ago Mr. R.G. Williams of New York published this sentence in a newspaper called the Emancipator,--"God commands and all nature cries out, that man should not be held as property. The system of making men property has plunged 2,250,000 of our fellow countrymen into the deepest physical and moral degradation, and they are every moment sinking deeper."

For this he was indicted by a Grand-Jury of the State of Alabama, and the Governor of that State made a demand on the Executive of New York insisting that Mr. Williams should be delivered up to take his trial in Alabama--a State where he had never been! But the New York Governor, after consulting with his law-advisers, did not come to the conclusion that it was consistent with the public policy of New York to "interfere actively" and promote Slavery in Alabama. _So he refused to deliver up Mr. Williams!_[224]

[Footnote 224: Med Case, p. 25.]

Gentlemen of the Jury, before you can convict me of the crime charged, you must ask three several sets of questions, and be satisfied of all these things which I will now set forth.