to-day? What have I or those I represent to do with your national
independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of
natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended
to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to
the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout
gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer
could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be
light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that
a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the
claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such
priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his
voice to swell the halleluiahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of
servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case
like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap like
a hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of
disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious
anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable
distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not
enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity,
and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me.
The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes
and death to me. This Fourth of July is _yours_, not _mine_. _You_ may
rejoice, _I_ must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand
illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous
anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean,
citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a
parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to
copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were
thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in
irrecoverable ruin. I can to-day take up the lament of a peeled and
woe-smitten people.
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yes! We wept when we
remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst
thereof. For there they that carried us away captive, required of us a
song; and they who wasted us, required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one
of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If
I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the
mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday,
are to-day rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach
them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of
sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly
over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be
treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach
before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow citizens, is
"American Slavery." I shall see this day and its popular characteristics
from the slave's point of view. Standing here, identified with the
American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare,
with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never
looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July. Whether we turn to the
declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the
conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is
false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to
be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding
slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is
outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the
Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon,
dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can
command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery--the great sin and
shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use
the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape
me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is
not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say it is just in this
circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a
favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and
denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would
be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there
is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you
have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this
country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man?
That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders
themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government.
They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the
slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if
committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to
the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will
subject a white man to like punishment. What is this but the
acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible
being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact
that Southern statute-books are covered with enactments, forbidding,
under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or
write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of
the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When
the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on
your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall
be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with
you that the slave is a man!
For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro
race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and
reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses,
constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron,
copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and
cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us
lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and
teachers; that while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common
to other men--digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the
Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving,
acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and
children, and above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian God,
and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave--we are
called upon to prove that we are men?
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the
rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I
argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans?
Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter
beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the
principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day in
the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show
that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and
positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make
myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There
is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery
is wrong _for him_.
What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of
their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of
their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay
their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them
with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock
out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and
submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with
blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No; I will not. I have better
employment for my time and strength that such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that
God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken?
There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be
divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I
cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is
needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I
would to-day pour out a fiery streak of biting ridicule, blasting
reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that
is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need
the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation
must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the
propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation
must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that
reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross
injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your
celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your
national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty
and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence;
your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and
hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade
and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and
hypocrisy--a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation
of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practises more
shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this
very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies
and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search
out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the
side of the every-day practises of this nation, and you will say with me
that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns
without a rival.
SHOULD COLORED MEN BE SUBJECT TO THE PAINS AND PENALTIES OF THE FUGITIVE
SLAVE LAW?[5]
BY CHARLES H. LANGSTON
CHARLES H. LANGSTON, _a native of Ohio, was the first to counsel
resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act, and lost no opportunity
himself to disobey it. He was found guilty of violating the law in
rescuing John Price, an alleged fugitive from service in Kentucky.
This speech is his answer to the question of the judge why the
sentence should not be pronounced upon him. He was sentenced to one
hundred and twenty days' imprisonment, and fined $100.00 and costs,
amounting to $872.72._
[Note 5: Speech of Charles H. Langston before the United States
District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, May 12, 1859.
Delivered when about to be sentenced for rescuing a man from slavery.]
After a trial of twenty-three days in the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Ohio, Hiram V. Willson presiding, and at a
cost to the United States Government of more than two thousand dollars,
C. H. Langston was found guilty of violating the Fugitive Slave Law, by
rescuing John Price, an alleged fugitive from service in Kentucky, from
the custody of one, Anderson Jennings, at Wellington, on the 13th day of
September, 1858.
Mr. Langston was sentenced to twenty days' imprisonment in the jail of
Cuyahoga county, and also to pay a fine of one hundred dollars and a
portion of the costs of prosecution, amounting to nine hundred and
seventy-two dollars and seventy cents.
BILL OF COSTS
Fine and bill of costs as copied from the Journal of the Court:
Fine $100.00
Clerk's fees 32.10
Marshal's fees 30.40
United States' witnesses 131.10
Docket fees 20.00
-------
Total $972.70
On the morning of the 12th of May, 1859, C. H. Langston was brought into
court to receive his sentence.
The judge, having entered the "oyez, oyez" of the crier, announced the
opening of the court, and the rattling of the gavel of the bailiff soon
brought the immense crowd to silence. The business then proceeded as
follows:
THE COURT.--Mr. Langston, you will stand up, sir.
Mr. Langston arose.
THE COURT.--You have been tried, Mr. Langston, by a jury, and convicted
of a violation of the criminal laws of the United States. Have you or
your counsel anything to say why the sentence of the law should not be
pronounced upon you?
MR. LANGSTON.--I am for the first time in my life before a court of
justice, charged with the violation of law, and am now about to be
sentenced. But before receiving that sentence I propose to say one or
two words in regard to the mitigation of that sentence, if it may be so
construed. I can not, of course, and do not expect that what I may say
will in any way change your predetermined line of action. I ask no such
favor at your hands.
I know that the courts of this country, that the laws of this country,
that the governmental machinery of this country are so constituted as to
oppress and outrage colored men, men of my complexion. I cannot then, of
course, expect, judging from the past history of the country, any mercy
from the laws, from the Constitution, or from the courts of the country.
Some days prior to the 13th of September, 1858, happening to be in
Oberlin on a visit, I found the country round about there, and the
village itself, filled with alarming rumors as to the fact that
slave-catchers, kidnappers, and Negro stealers were lying hidden and
skulking about, awaiting some opportunity to get their bloody hands on
some helpless creature, to drag him back,--or for the first time,--into
helpless and lifelong bondage.
These reports becoming current all over that neighborhood, old men and
innocent women and children became exceedingly alarmed for their safety.
It was not uncommon to hear mothers say that they dare not send their
children to school, for fear that they would be caught up and carried
off by the way. Some of these people had become free by long and patient
toil at night, after working the long, long day for cruel masters, and
thus at length getting money enough to buy their liberty.
Others had become free by means of the good will of their masters. And
there were others who had become free--to their everlasting honor, I say
it--by the intensest exercise of their own God-given powers;--by
escaping from the plantations of their masters, eluding the
blood-thirsty patrols and sentinels so thickly scattered all along their
path, outrunning blood-hounds and horses, swimming rivers and fording
swamps, and reaching at last, through incredible difficulties, what
they, in their delusion, supposed to be free soil. These three classes
were in Oberlin, trembling alike for their safety because they well knew
their fate should these men-hunters get their hands on them.
In the midst of such excitement, the 13th day of September was ushered
in--a day ever memorable in the history of Oberlin, and I presume also,
in the history of this court. These men-hunters had, by lying devices,
decoyed into a place, where they could get their hands on him--I will
not say a slave, for I do not know that--but a _man_, _a brother_, who
had the right to his liberty under the laws of God, under the laws of
nature, and under the Declaration of American Independence.
In the midst of all this excitement the news came to us like a flash of
lightning that an actual seizure under and by means of fraudulent
pretenses, had been made! Being identified with that man by color, by
race, by manhood, by sympathies, such as God has implanted in us all, I
felt it my duty to go and do what I could towards liberating him. I had
been taught by my Revolutionary father--and I say this with all due
respect to him--and by his honored associates, that the fundamental
doctrine of this Government was, that _all_ men have a right to life and
liberty, and coming from the Old Dominion I had brought into Ohio these
sentiments deeply impressed upon my heart. I went to Wellington, and
hearing from the parties themselves by what authority the boy was held
in custody, I conceived from what little knowledge I had of law that
they had no right to hold him. And as your Honor has repeatedly laid
down the law in this court, a man is free until he is proven to be
legally restrained of his liberty. I believed that upon that principle
of law those men were bound to take their prisoner before the very first
magistrate they found and there establish the facts set forth in their
warrant, and that until they did this every man should presume that
their claim was unfounded, and to institute such proceedings for the
purpose of securing an investigation as they might find warranted by the
laws of this State.
Now, sir, if that is not the plain common sense and correct view of the
law, then I have been misled, both by your Honor and by the prevalent
received opinion. It is said that they had a warrant. Why then, should
they not establish its validity before the proper officers? And I stand
here to-day, sir, to say that with an exception, of which I shall soon
speak, _to procure such a lawful investigation of the authority under
which they claimed to act, was the part I took in that day's
proceedings, and the only part_. I supposed it to be my duty as a
citizen of Ohio--excuse me for saying that, sir,--as an _outlaw of the
United States_, (much sensation) to do what I could to secure at least
this form of justice to my brother, whose liberty was at
peril.--_Whatever more than that has been sworn to on this trial, as act
of mine, is false, ridiculously false._ When I found these men refusing
to go, according to the law, as I apprehended it, and subject their
claim to an official inspection, and that nothing short of a _habeas
corpus_ would oblige such an inspection, I was willing to go even thus
far, supposing in that county a sheriff might, perhaps, be found with
nerve enough to serve it. In this again, I failed. Nothing then was left
to me, nothing to the boy in custody, but the confirmation of my first
belief that the pretended authority was worthless, and the employment of
those means of liberation which belong to us. With regard to the part I
took in the forcible rescue, which followed, I have nothing to say,
further than I have already said. The evidence is before you. It is
alleged that I said "_We_ will have him anyhow." _This I NEVER said._ I
did say to Mr. Lowe, what I honestly believe to be the truth, that the
crowd was very much excited, many of them averse to longer delay and
bent upon a rescue at all hazards; and that he being an old acquaintance
and friend of mine, I was anxious to extricate him from the dangerous
position he occupied, and therefore advised Jennings to give the boy up.
Further than this I did not say, either to him or to anyone else.
The law under which I am arraigned is an unjust one, one made to crush
the colored man, and one that outrages every feeling of humanity, as
well as every rule of Right.
With its constitutionality I have nothing to do; about that I know but
little and care much less. But suppose it is constitutional, what then?
To tell me a law is constitutional which robs me of my _liberty_ is
simply ridiculous. I would curse the constitution that authorized the
enactment of such a law; I would trample the provisions of such a law
under my feet and defy its pains and penalties. I would respect and obey
such an inhuman law no more than OUR revolutionary fathers did the
odious and absurd doctrine that kings and tyrants reign and rule by
divine _right_. But it has often been said by learned and good men that
this law is unconstitutional. I remember the excitement that prevailed
throughout all the free States when it was passed; I remember, too, how
often it has been said by individuals, conventions, legislatures, and
even _Judges_ that it is not only unconstitutional, but that it never
could be, never should be, and never was meant to be enforced. I had
always believed, until the contrary appeared in the actual institution
of proceedings, that the provisions of this odious statute would never
be enforced within the bounds of this State.
But I have another reason to offer why I should not be sentenced, and
one that I think pertinent to the case. The common law of England--and
you will excuse me for referring to that, since I am not a lawyer, but a
private man--was that every man should be tried by a jury of men
occupying the same political and legal status _with himself_. Lords
should be tried before a jury of lords; peers of the realm should be
tried before peers of the realm; vassals before vassals. And even "where
an _alien_ was indicted, the jury _shall be demenietate_, or _half
foreigners_"; and a jury thus constituted were sworn "well and truly to
try and true deliverance make between the sovereign lord, the king, and
the prisoner whom they have in charge; and a true verdict to give
according to the evidence and without prejudice." The Constitution of
the United States guarantees--not merely to its citizens, but to _all
persons_--a trial before an impartial jury. I have had no such trial.
The colored man is oppressed by certain universal and deeply fixed
prejudices. Those jurors are well known to have shared largely in these
prejudices, and I therefore consider that they were neither impartial,
nor were they a jury of my peers. Politically and legally they are not
my equals. They have aided to form a State constitution which denies to
colored men citizenship, and under that constitution laws have been
enacted withholding from us many of our most valuable rights. These
unjust laws exclude colored men from the jury box and force us to be
tried in every case by jurors, not only filled with prejudices against
us, but far above us politically and legally, made so both by the
statute laws and by the Constitution. The prejudices which white people
have against colored men grow out of the fact that we have, as a people,
_consented_ for two hundred years to be _slaves_ of the whites. We have
been scourged, crushed, and cruelly oppressed, and have submitted to it
all tamely, meekly, peaceably; I mean, as a people, with rare individual
exceptions,--and to-day you see us thus meekly submitting to the
penalties of an infamous law. Now the Americans have this feeling, and
it is an honorable one, that they will respect those who rebel at
oppression, but despise those who tamely submit to outrage and wrong;
and while our people as a people submit, they will as a people be
despised. Why, they will hardly meet on terms of equality with us in a
whiskey shop, in a car, at a table, or even at the altar of God, so
thorough and hearty a contempt have they for those who _lie still_ under
the heel of the oppressor. The jury came into the box with that feeling.
They knew that they had that feeling, and so the Court knows now, and
knew then. The gentlemen who prosecuted me, the Court itself, and even
the counsel who defended me, have that feeling.
I was tried by a jury which was prejudiced; before a Court that was
prejudiced; prosecuted by an officer who was prejudiced, and defended,
though ably, by counsel who were prejudiced. And therefore it is, your
Honor, that I urge by all that is good and great in manhood, that I
should not be subjected to the pains and penalties of this oppressive
law, when I have not been tried, either by a jury of my peers, according
to the principles of the common law, or by an impartial jury according
to the Constitution of the United States.