Such are some of the consequences of this ill-fated measure. But the
duty of the Committee cannot be performed without glancing at its
authors also. By an easy transition we pass from one to the other, for
the two are in natural harmony. Each may be read in the light of the
other.
And who were the authors of this Fugitive Slave Act? The answer may be
general or special.
If general, it may be said that its authors were the representatives of
Slavery, constituting that same Oligarchy, or Slave Power, which has
madly plunged this country into civil war. Some of them, even at the
time of its enactment, were already engaged in treasonable conspiracy
against the Union. They thought little of any pretended interests in
property; but they were occupied with two controlling ideas: first,
how to unite their own people at home; and, secondly, how to insult
and subjugate the Free States. The Fugitive Slave Act furnished a
convenient agency for this double purpose, and was naturally adopted by
men who had lost the power of blushing as well as the power of feeling.
Unquestionable facts show how little real occasion there was for this
barbarous statute. It is now established by the report of the census in
1860, that the loss of slaves by escape was trivial. According to this
document, “the whole annual loss to the Southern States from this cause
bears less proportion to the amount of capital involved than the daily
variations which, in ordinary times, occur in the fluctuations of State
or Government securities in the city of New York alone.”[374] Such a
statement is most suggestive. Official tables furnish confirmatory
details. From these it appears that during the year ending June 1,
1860, out of 3,949,557 slaves, only 803 were able to escape, being
one to about five thousand, or at the rate of one fiftieth of one per
cent. Then again, out of more than one million of slaves in the Border
States in 1860, fewer than five hundred escaped. Such are authentic
facts. Nor is this all. The slave who succeeded in escaping, even when
reënslaved, was never afterwards regarded as good property. All the
work he could do would not compensate for his bad example. Jefferson
Davis, in the frankness of an address to his constituents at home in
Mississippi, on the 11th July, 1851, said openly that he did not want
any fugitive slaves sent into his State; that “such stock would be
a curse to the land,--for, with the knowledge they had gained, they
would ruin the rest of the slaves, and very probably give rise to the
most dreadful consequences”; and he concluded by announcing, that “he
would not have in his quarters a negro brought from the North on any
account whatever.”[375] And yet, in face of such authentic facts,
showing how few escaped, and in face of an instinctive repugnance to
any commingling with other slaves by those who had once tasted Liberty,
this atrocious statute was enacted, and its enforcement was maintained
at the point of the bayonet, while Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War.
There have been wars of _pretext_; but here was an act of legislation,
which, whenever enforced, was a _Petty War_, and its origin
was a pretext. It was nothing but a pretext, through which the
representatives of Slavery sought to enforce a flagitious power. The
pretext was worthy of the legislation, and both pretext and legislation
were in harmony with the authors, who drew their motives of conduct
from Slavery and nothing else. The same spirit which triumphed in
this Fugitive Slave Act, on a pretext, has at last broken forth in
rebellion, on a pretext also. Each was under pretext of maintaining
Slavery, and each proceeded from the same influence.
Speaking, then, in general terms, the authors of the Fugitive Slave Act
were the authors of the Rebellion. The one and the other have the same
paternity, as unquestionably they have a family likeness.
If, however, we go still further, and seek the individual authors of
this odious measure, the forerunner of the Rebellion, it is easy to
point them out.
The bill was reported to the Senate by Mr. Butler, of South Carolina,
so that in origin it may be traced directly to the hot-house of
nullification, treason, and rebellion. But Mr. Mason, of Virginia,
subsequently moved a substitute, which, being adopted, became the
existing statute, and this enormity stalked into life under the
patronage of a Senator from Virginia. Public report, which is entitled
to belief, attributes this substitute to the cunning hand of Mr.
Faulkner, also of Virginia; but, on moving it in the Senate, Mr. Mason
made it his own, and pressed it with untiring pertinacity, as the
“Globe” amply attests, until it became the law of the land, so far as
such a measure can in any just sense be “law.”
But whether its authors be found in States or individuals, there is
in it the same pernicious virus, which, breaking out first in South
Carolina, inoculated Virginia, like the Rebellion itself. A Senator
from Virginia took from South Carolina the final responsibility, as an
aged madman from Virginia asked and obtained permission to point the
first gun at Fort Sumter. Nor are the two events unlike in character.
The Fugitive Slave Act was levelled at the Union hardly less than the
batteries at Charleston, when they opened upon Fort Sumter.
Such are the authors, general and special, of this wickedness. The
Senator from South Carolina is dead; but the representatives of Slavery
still live, and so also do the two madmen from Virginia. Thus the
representatives of Slavery, though now in open rebellion, continue,
through unrepealed statute, to insult the loyal States, to degrade the
Republic, and to rule the country which they tried to ruin. And thus
two audacious Rebels, one the pretended Minister of the Rebellion at
London, and the other an officer in the Rebel forces, still exert among
us a malignant power, while, with a long arm not yet amputated, they
reach even into the streets of Washington, and fasten the chains of the
slave.