Theodore Parker alluding to the Federal judges and officials in Boston
who bore a part in the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, addressing
the "Spirits of Tyrants" and apostrophising Cain, Herod, Nero, and
Torquemada, proceeds as follows: "Come up, thou heap of wickedness,
George Jeffreys! Thy hands deep purple with the blood of thy murdered
fellow men!... What! Dost thou shudder? Thou turn back? These not thy
kindred? It is true, George Jeffreys. And these are not thy kin....
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."[319]
Even the patriotic enthusiasm of Longfellow in his "Ode to the Union,"
aroused Garrison's ire, who denounced it as "a eulogy dripping with
the blood of imbruted humanity," and for the poet's conception of the
"Ship of State" he substituted:
... "'Perfidious bark!
Built i' th' eclipse and rigged with curses dark.'...
Destined to go down full many a fathom deep, to the joy and exultation
of all who are yearning for the deliverance of a groaning
world."[320](_a_)
(_a_): Note: The author has not cited any examples of the terms
employed by the leaders of the Abolitionists in referring to the
Southern people. If Webster were denounced as a "monster" and
Lincoln as a "slave-hound" because, in their devotion to the Union
and their respect for law, they would protect the constitutional
rights of slaveholders, the reader may readily imagine the
denunciations poured upon the citizens of the slaveholding states.
For twenty-five years the people of the South, their civilization
and morality were arraigned by orators and editors, preachers and
poets, dramatists and novelists, in terms without parallel in
polemic literature.