And, first, as to its consequences. In the history of the African race
these can never be forgotten. Since the first authorization of the
slave-trade, nothing so terrible had fallen upon this unhappy people,
whether we contemplate its cruelty to individuals or the wide-spread
proscription which it launched against all whose skins were not white.
It is sad to know of suffering anywhere, even by a single lowly person.
But our feelings are enhanced, when individual sorrows are multiplied,
and the blow descends upon a whole race. History, too, takes up the
grief. The Jews expelled from Spain by merciless decree, the Huguenots
driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, our own
Puritan fathers compelled to exile for religious Freedom,--all these
receive a gushing sympathy, and we detest the tyrants. These were
persecutions for religion, in days of religious bigotry and darkness.
But an American Congress, in this age of Christian light, not in the
fanaticism of religion, but in the fanaticism of Slavery, did a deed
that finds companionship only with these enormities of the past. The
Fugitive Slave Act carried distress and terror to every person with
African blood in the Free States. All were fluttered, as the arbitrary
edict commenced its swoop over the land. The very rumor that a
slave-hunter was in town so shook the nerves of a sensitive freeman on
whom was the ban of color, that he died. To large numbers the Act was a
decree of instant expulsion from the Republic, under penalty of Slavery
to them and their posterity forever. Driven by despair, as many as six
thousand Christian men and women, meritorious persons,--a larger band
than that of the escaping Puritans,--precipitately fled from homes they
had established, opportunities of usefulness they had found, and the
regard of fellow-citizens, until, at last, in an unwelcome Northern
climate, beneath the British flag, with glad voices of Freedom on their
lips, though with the yearnings of exile in their hearts, they were
happy in swelling the chant, “God save the Queen!”
Such an injustice cannot be restricted in influence. Everywhere it is
an extension of Slavery, with all the wrong, violence, and brutality
which are the natural outgrowth of Slavery. The Free States became
little better than a huge outlying plantation quivering under the lash
of the overseer; or rather, they were a diversified hunting-ground
for the flying bondmen, resounding always with the “halloo” of the
huntsman. There seemed no rest. The chase was hardly over at Boston
before it was started at Philadelphia, Syracuse, or Buffalo, and
then again raged furiously across the prairies of the West. Not an
instance occurred which did not shock the conscience of the country and
sting it with anger. Records of the time attest the accuracy of this
statement. Perhaps there is no example in history where human passion
showed itself in grander forms, or eloquence lent all her gifts more
completely to the demands of Liberty, than the speech of an eminent
character, now dead and buried in a foreign land,[373] denouncing the
capture of Thomas Sims at Boston, and invoking the judgment of God and
man upon the agents in this wickedness. In the history of Humanity
this great effort cannot be forgotten. But every case pleaded with an
eloquence of its own, until, at last, occurred one of those tragedies
darkening the heavens and crying out with a voice that will be heard.
It was the voice of a mother standing over her murdered child. Margaret
Garner escaped from Slavery with three children, but was overtaken
at Cincinnati. Unwilling to behold her offspring returned to the
shambles of the South, this unhappy person, described in the testimony
as “a womanly, amiable, affectionate mother,” determined to save them
in the only way within her power. With a butcher-knife, coolly and
deliberately, she took the life of one of the children, “almost white,
and a little girl of rare beauty,” and attempted, without success, to
take the life of the other two. To the preacher who interrogated her
she exclaimed: “The child was my own, given me of God to do the best
a mother could in its behalf. I have done the best I could; I would
have done more and better for the rest; I knew it was better for them
to go home to God than back to Slavery.” But she was restrained in her
purpose. The Fugitive Slave Act triumphed, and, after the determination
of sundry questions of jurisdiction, this devoted historic mother, with
the two children remaining to her, and the dead body of the little one
just emancipated, under a national escort of armed men, was hurried
to the doom of Slavery. Her case did not end with this revolting
sacrifice. So long as the human heart is moved by human suffering, the
story of this mother will be read with alternate anger and grief, while
it is studied as a perpetual witness to the slaveholding tyranny which
then ruled the Republic with execrable exactions, destined at last to
break out in war,--as the sacrifice of Virginia by her father is a
perpetual witness to the decemviral tyranny which ruled Rome.
But Liberty is always priceless. There are other instances, less known,
where kindred wrong has been done. Every case is a tragedy, under the
forms of law. Worse than poisoned bowl or dagger was the certificate
of a commissioner, allowed, without interruption, to continue his
dreadful trade. Even since the Rebellion has raged in blood, the
pretension of returning slaves to their masters is not abandoned. The
piety of Abraham, who offered up Isaac as a sacrifice to Jehovah, is
imitated, and the country continues to offer up fugitive bondmen as
a sacrifice to Slavery. It is reported on good authority, that among
slaves thus sacrificed was one who by communications to the Government
had been the means of saving upwards of one hundred thousand dollars.
Here in Washington, since the beneficent Act of Emancipation, even in
sight of the flag floating from the National Capitol, the Fugitive
Slave Act has been made a scourge and a terror to innocent men and
women.
If all these pains and sorrows had redounded in any respect to the
honor of the country, or had contributed in any way to the strength
of the Union, then we might confess, perhaps, that something at least
had been gained. But, alas! there has been nothing but unmixed evil.
The country has suffered in good name, while foreign nations have
pointed with scorn to a republic which could legalize such indecencies.
Not a case occurred which was not greedily chronicled in Europe, and
circulated there by the enemies of liberal institutions. Even since the
Rebellion began in the name of Slavery, the existence of this odious
enactment unrepealed on our statute-book has been quoted abroad to show
that the supporters of the Union are as little deserving of sympathy
as Rebel Slavemongers. By the enforcement of this odious Act the Union
has suffered from the beginning; for not a slave is thrust back into
bondage without weakening those patriotic sympathies, North and South,
which are its best support. The natural irritation of the North, as
it beheld all safeguards of Freedom overthrown and Slavery triumphant
in its very streets, was answered by savage exultation in the South,
which seemed to dance about its victims. Each instance was the occasion
of new exasperations on both sides, which were skilfully employed by
wicked conspirators “to fire the Southern heart.”