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A Slave Hunter Killed.
The following is from the Washington (Pa.) Patriot of 1846:
"We learn that a few days ago, a fugitive slave from Maryland
was pursued and overtaken in Somerset county, in this State
by a man named Holland, a wagoner from Ohio, who was tempted
to the task by the reward offered, $150. When they reached
McCarty's tavern the slave attempted to escape, but was caught
by Holland while in the act of climbing a fence. The slave drew
a long knife, which he had concealed about his person, and
plunged it into Holland's heart, causing his death instantly.
He made good his escape, immediately pursued by the people of
the neighborhood, who at nightfall, had surrounded him, but in
the darkness of the night he eluded their vigilance, and is now
beyond their reach."
The Rights of the Fugitive.
The Hon. J. R. Giddings, in a speech in the House of
Representatives, at Washington, Feb. 18, 1846, said--"In regard
to arresting slaves, we [of the free States] owe no duties to
the master; on the contrary, all our sympathies, our feelings,
and our moral duties, beyond what I have stated, are with the
slave. We will neither arrest him for the master, nor will
we assist the master in making such arrest. I am aware that
the third clause of the second section of the first article
of the Constitution was once believed, by some, to impose
upon the people of these free States the duty of arresting
fugitive slaves. But it is now judicially settled that no such
obligation rests upon us. Indeed a proposition to impose upon
us such a duty, at the time of framing the Constitution, was
rejected, without a division, by the Convention. We, therefore,
leave the master to arrest the slave if he can; and we leave
the slave to defend himself against the master if he can. We do
not interfere between them. The slave possesses as perfect a
right to defend his person and his liberty against the master
as any citizen of our State. Our laws protect him against every
other person, except the master or his agent, but they leave
him to protect himself against them. If he, while defending
himself, slays the master, our laws do not interfere to punish
him in any way, further than they would any other person who
should slay a man in actual self-defence. The laws of the slave
State cannot reach him, nor is there any law, of God or man,
that condemns him. On the contrary, our reason, our judgment,
our humanity approves the act; and we admire the courage and
firmness with which he defends the "inalienable rights with
which the God of Nature has endowed him." We regard him as a
hero worthy of imitation; and we place his name in the same
category with that of Madison Washington, who, on board the
Creole, boldly maintained his God-given rights, against those
inhuman pirates who were carrying him and his fellow-servants
to a worse than savage slave-market."
* * * * *
ANOTHER SLAVE SUICIDE. "The slave of a farmer in an adjoining
county, (Jefferson,) having been jumped upon and stamped by his
master, _with spurs on_, so as to cruelly lacerate his face as
well as his body, he was found, next morning, in an adjacent
pond or stream of water--having tied a stone to his own neck,
(as it is said,) and plunged in, for the successful purpose of
drowning himself, under the feelings of desperation caused by
the fiendish treatment of his master!"--_Balt. Sat. Visiter,
Aug., 1846._