kindred! Why dost thou turn pale, as when the crowd
clutched at thy life in London Street? It is true, George
Jeffreys, and these are not thy kin. Forgive me that I
should send thee on such an errand, or bid thee seek
companionship with such--with Boston hunters of the slave!
Thou wert not base enough! It was a great bribe that tempted
thee! Again I say, pardon me for sending thee to keep
company with such men! Thou only struckst at men accused of
crime; not at men accused only of their birth! 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! Rest still, Herod! Be quiet, Nero! Sleep, St.
Dominic, and sleep, O Torquemada! in your fiery jail! Sleep,
Jeffreys, underneath 'the altar of the church' which seeks
with Christian charity to hide your hated bones."
"Well, my brethren, these are only the beginning of sorrows.
There will be other victims yet; this will not settle the
question. What shall we do? I think I am a calm man and a
cool man, and I have a word or two to say as to what we
shall do. Never obey the law. Keep the law of God. Next I
say, resist not evil with evil; resist not now with
violence. Why do I say this? Will you tell me that I am a
coward? Perhaps I am; at least I am not afraid to be called
one. Why do I say, then, do not now resist with violence?
Because it is not time just yet; it would not succeed. If I
had the eloquence that I sometimes dream of, which goes into
a crowd of men, and gathers them in its mighty arm, and
sways them as the pendent boughs of yonder elm shall be
shaken by the summer breeze next June, I would not give that
counsel. I would call on men, and lift up my voice like a
trumpet through the whole land, until I had gathered
millions out of the North and the South, and they should
crush slavery for ever, as the ox crushes the spider
underneath his feet. But such eloquence is given to no man.
It was not given to the ancient Greek who 'shook the arsenal
and fulmined over Greece.' He that so often held the nobles
and the mob of Rome within his hand, had it not. He that
spoke as never man spake, and who has since gathered two
hundred millions to his name, had it not. No man has it. The
ablest must wait for time! It is idle to resist here and
now. It is not the hour. If in 1765 they had attempted to
carry out the Revolution by force, they would have failed.
Had it failed, we had not been here to-day. There would have
been no little monument at Lexington 'sacred to liberty and
the rights of mankind' honoring the men who 'fell in the
cause of God and their country.' No little monument at
Concord; nor that tall pile of eloquent stone at Bunker
Hill, to proclaim that 'Resistance to tyrants is obedience
to God.' Success is due to the discretion, heroism,
calmness, and forbearance of our fathers: let us wait our
time. It will come--perhaps will need no sacrifice of
blood."[215]
[Footnote 215: 2 Parker's Occasional Sermons, p. 334-337, 343-348,
351, 352.]
Gentlemen, I think Judge Finch could construct a misdemeanor out of
these words; you will find in them nothing but the plain speech of a
minister of the Christian religion.
On the 6th of July, 1851, I preached "Of the three chief Safeguards of
Society," and said:--
"Nowhere in the world is there a people so orderly, so much
attached to law, as the people of these Northern States. But
one law is an exception. The people of the North hate the
fugitive slave law, as they have never hated any law since
the stamp act. I know there are men in the Northern States
who like it,--who would have invented slavery, had it not
existed long before. But the mass of the Northern people
hate this law, because it is hostile to the purpose of all
just human law, hostile to the purpose of society, hostile
to the purpose of individual life; because it is hostile to
the law of God,--bids the wrong, forbids the right. We
disobey that, for the same reason that we keep other laws:
because we reverence the law of God. Why should we keep that
odious law which makes us hated wherever justice is loved?
Because we must sometimes do a disagreeable deed to
accomplish an agreeable purpose? The purpose of that law is
to enable three hundred thousand slaveholders to retake on
our soil the men they once stole on other soil! Most of the
city churches of the North seem to think that is a good
thing. Very well; is it worth while for fifteen million
freemen to transgress the plainest of natural laws, the most
obvious instincts of the human heart, and the plainest
duties of Christianity, for that purpose? The price to pay
is the religious integrity of fifteen million men; the thing
to buy is a privilege for three hundred thousand
slaveholders to use the North as a hunting field whereon to
kidnap men at our cost. Judge you of that bargain."
"I adjure you to reverence a government that is right,
statutes that are right, officers that are right; but to
disobey every thing that is wrong. I intreat you by your
love for your country, by the memory of your fathers, by
your reverence for Jesus Christ, yea, by the deep and holy
love of God which Jesus taught, and you now feel."[216]
[Footnote 216: 2 Parker's Occasional Sermons, p. 392-394.]
You will say all this is but indispensable duty; but the judge who
hanged a man for treason because he promised to make his son "heir to
the Crown"--meaning the "Crown Tavern" that he lived in--would
doubtless find treason in my words also.
On the 12th of April, 1852, I delivered an address to commemorate the
first anniversary of the Kidnapping of Thomas Sims, and said:--
"But when the rulers have inverted their function, and
enacted wickedness into a law which treads down the
unalienable rights of man to such a degree as this, then I
know no ruler but God, no law but natural Justice. I tear
the hateful statute of kidnappers to shivers; I trample it
underneath my feet. I do it in the name of all law; in the
name of Justice and of Man; in the name of the dear God."
"You remember the decision of the Circuit judge,--himself
soon to be summoned by death before the Judge who is no
respecter of persons,--not allowing the destined victim his
last hope, 'the great writ of right.' The decision left him
entirely at the mercy of the other kidnappers. The
Court-room was crowded with 'respectable people,' 'gentlemen
of property and standing:' they received the decision with
'applause and the clapping of hands.' Seize a lamb out of a
flock, a wolf from a pack of wolves, the lambs bleat with
sympathy, the wolves howl with fellowship and fear; but when
a competitor for the Presidency sends back to eternal
bondage a poor, friendless negro, asking only his limbs,
wealthy gentlemen of Boston applaud the outrage.
"'O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason!'"
"When the Fugitive Slave Bill passed, the six New England
States lay fast asleep: Massachusetts slept soundly, her
head pillowed on her unsold bales of cotton and of woollen
goods, dreaming of 'orders from the South.' Justice came to
waken her, and whisper of the peril of nine thousand
citizens; and she started in her sleep, and, being frighted,
swore a prayer or two, then slept again. But Boston
woke,--sleeping, in her shop, with ears open, and her eye on
the market, her hand on her purse, dreaming of goods for
sale,--Boston woke broadly up, and fired a hundred guns for
joy. O Boston, Boston! if thou couldst have known, in that
thine hour, the things which belong unto thy peace! But no:
they were hidden from her eyes. She had prayed to her god,
to Money; he granted her the request, but sent leanness into
her soul."
"Yet one charge has been made against the Government, which
seems to me a little harsh and unjust. It has been said the
administration preferred low and contemptible men as their
tools; judges who blink at law, advocates of infamy, and men
cast off from society for perjury, for nameless crimes, and
sins not mentionable in English speech; creatures 'not so
good as the dogs that licked Lazarus's sores; but, like
flies, still buzzing upon any thing that is raw.' There is a
semblance of justice in the charge: witness Philadelphia,
Buffalo, Boston; witness New York. It is true, for
kidnappers the Government did take men that looked 'like a
bull-dog just come to man's estate;' men whose face declared
them, 'if not the devil, at least his twin-brother.' There
are kennels of the courts wherein there settles down all
that the law breeds most foul, loathsome, and hideous and
abhorrent to the eye of day; there this contaminating puddle
gathers its noisome ooze, slowly, stealthily, continually,
agglomerating its fetid mass by spontaneous cohesion, and
sinking by the irresistible gravity of rottenness into that
abhorred deep, the lowest, ghastliest pit in all the
subterranean vaults of human sin. It is true the Government
has skimmed the top and dredged the bottom of these kennels
of the courts, taking for its purpose the scum and sediment
thereof, the Squeers, the Fagins, and the Quilps of the law,
the monsters of the court. Blame not the Government; it took
the best it could get. It was necessity, not will, which
made the selection. Such is the stuff that kidnappers must
be made of. If you wish to kill a man, it is not bread you
buy: it is poison. Some of the instruments of Government
were such as one does not often look upon. But, of old time,
an inquisitor was always 'a horrid-looking fellow, as
beseemed his trade.' It is only justice that a kidnapper
should bear 'his great commission in his look.'"
"I pity the kidnappers, the poor tools of men almost as
base. I would not hurt a hair of their heads; but I would
take the thunder of the moral world, and dash its bolted
lightning on this crime of stealing men, till the name of
kidnapping should be like Sodom and Gomorrah. It is piracy
to steal a man in Guinea; what is it to do this in Boston?
"I pity the merchants who, for their trade, were glad to
steal their countrymen; I wish them only good. Debate in
yonder hall has shown how little of humanity there is in the
trade of Boston. She looks on all the horrors which
intemperance has wrought, and daily deals in every street;
she scrutinizes the jails,--they are filled by rum; she
looks into the alms-houses, crowded full by rum; she walks
her streets, and sees the perishing classes fall, mowed down
by rum; she enters the parlors of wealthy men, looks into
the bridal chamber, and meets death: the ghosts of the slain
are there,--men slain by rum. She knows it all, yet says,
'There is an interest at stake!'--the interest of rum; let
man give way! Boston does this to-day. Last year she stole a
man; her merchants stole a man! The sacrifice of man to
money, when shall it have an end? I pity those merchants who
honor money more than man. Their gold is cankered, and their
soul is brass,--is rusted brass. They must come up before
the posterity which they affect to scorn. What voice can
plead for them before their own children? The eye that
mocketh at the justice of its son, and scorneth to obey the
mercy of its daughter, the ravens of posterity shall pick it
out, and the young eagles eat it up!
"But there is yet another tribunal: 'After the death the
judgment!' When he maketh inquisition for the blood of the
innocent, what shall the stealers of men reply? Boston
merchants, where is your brother, Thomas Sims? Let Cain
reply to Christ."[217]
[Footnote 217: 1 Parker's Additional Speeches, p. 50, 70, 88, 89, 92,
93, 100, 101.]
The Sunday after Mr. Webster's death, Oct. 31, 1852, I spoke of that
powerful man; listen to this:--
"Mr. Webster stamped his foot, and broke through into the
great hollow of practical atheism, which undergulfs the
State and Church. Then what a caving in was there! The
firm-set base of northern cities quaked and yawned with
gaping rents. 'Penn's sandy foundation' shook again, and
black men fled from the city of brotherly love, as doves,
with plaintive cry, flee from a farmer's barn when summer
lightning stabs the roof. There was a twist in Faneuil Hall,
and the doors could not open wide enough for Liberty to
regain her ancient Cradle; only soldiers, greedy to steal a
man, themselves stole out and in. Ecclesiastic quicksand ran
down the hole amain. Metropolitan churches toppled, and
pitched, and canted, and cracked, their bowing walls all out
of plumb. Colleges, broken from the chain which held them in
the stream of time, rushed towards the abysmal rent. Harvard
led the way, '_Christo et Ecclesiae_' in her hand. Down
plunged Andover, 'Conscience and the Constitution' clutched
in its ancient, failing arm. New Haven began to cave in.
Doctors of Divinity, orthodox, heterodox, with only a doxy
of doubt, 'no settled opinion,' had great alacrity in
sinking, and went down quick, as live as ever, into the pit
of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, the bottomless pit of lower
law,--one with his mother, cloaked by a surplice, hid
beneath his sinister arm, and an acknowledged brother
grasped by his remaining limb. Fossils of theology, dead as
Ezekiel's bones, took to their feet again, and stood up for
most arrant wrong. 'There is no higher law of God,' quoth
they, as they went down; 'no golden rule, only the statutes
of men.' A man with mythologic ear might fancy that he heard
a snickering laugh run round the world below, snorting,
whinnying, and neighing, as it echoed from the infernal spot
pressed by the fallen monsters of ill-fame, who, thousands
of years ago, on the same errand, had plunged down the
self-same way. What tidings the echo bore, Dante nor Milton
could not tell. Let us leave that to darkness, and to
silence, and to death.
"But spite of all this, in every city, in every town, in
every college, and in each capsizing church, there were
found Faithful Men, who feared not the monster, heeded not
the stamping;--nay, some doctors of divinity were found
living. In all their houses there was light, and the
destroying angel shook them not. The word of the Lord came
in open vision to their eye; they had their lamps trimmed
and burning, their loins girt; they stood road-ready.
Liberty and Religion turned in thither, and the slave found
bread and wings. 'When my father and my mother forsake me,
then the Lord will hold me up!'
"After the 7th of March, Mr. Webster became the ally of the
worst of men, the forefront of kidnapping. The orator of
Plymouth Rock was the advocate of slavery; the hero of
Bunker Hill put chains round Boston Court House; the
applauder of Adams and Jefferson was a tool of the
slaveholder, and a keeper of slavery's dogs, the associate
of the kidnapper, and the mocker of men who loved the right.
Two years he lived with that rabble rout for company, his
name the boast of every vilest thing.
"'Oh, how unlike the place from whence he fell!'"
"Do men mourn for him? See how they mourn! The streets are
hung with black. The newspapers are sad colored. The shops
are put in mourning. The Mayor and Aldermen wear crape.
Wherever his death is made known, the public business stops,
and flags drop half-mast down. The courts adjourn. The
courts of Massachusetts--at Boston, at Dedham, at Lowell,
all adjourn; the courts of New Hampshire, of Maine, of New
York; even at Baltimore and Washington, the courts adjourn;
for the great lawyer is dead, and Justice must wait another
day. Only the United States Court, in Boston, trying a man
for helping Shadrach out of the furnace of the
kidnappers,--the court which executes the Fugitive Slave
Bill,--that does not adjourn; that keeps on; its worm dies
not, and the fire of its persecution is not quenched, when
death puts out the lamp of life! Injustice is hungry for its
prey, and must not be balked. It was very proper! Symbolical
court of the Fugitive Slave Bill--it does not respect life,
why should it death? and, scorning liberty, why should it
heed decorum?"[218]
[Footnote 218: 1 Parker's Additional Speeches, 235-37, 246-47.]
On the 12th of February, 1854, I preached "Some Thoughts on the new
Assault upon Freedom in America."
"Who put Slavery in the Constitution; made it Federal? who
put it in the new States? who got new soil to plant it in?
who carried it across the Mississippi--into Louisiana,
Florida, Texas, Utah, New Mexico? who established it in the
Capital of the United States? who adopted Slavery and
volunteered to catch a runaway, in 1793, and repeated the
act in 1850,--in defiance of all law, all precedent, all
right? Why, it was the North. 'Spain armed herself with
bloodhounds,' said Mr. Pitt, 'to extirpate the wretched
natives of America.' In 1850, the Christian Democracy set
worse bloodhounds afoot to pursue Ellen Craft; offered them
five dollars for the run, if they did not take her; ten if
they did! The price of blood was Northern money; the
bloodhounds--they were Kidnappers born at the North, bred
there, kennelled in her church, fed on her sacraments,
blessed by her priests! In 1778, Mr. Pitt had a yet harsher
name for the beasts wherewith despotic Spain hunted the red
man in the woods--he called them '_Hell Hounds_.' But they
only hunted 'savages, heathens, men born in barbarous
lands.' What would he say of the pack which in 1851 hunted
American Christians, in the 'Athens of America,' and stole a
man on the grave of Hancock and Adams--all Boston looking
on, and its priests blessing the deed!"
"See what encourages the South to make new encroachments.
She has been eminently successful in her former demands,
especially with the last. The authors of the fugitive slave
bill did not think that enormity could be got through
Congress: it was too atrocious in itself, too insulting to
the North. But Northern men sprang forward to defend
it--powerful politicians supported it to the fullest extent.
The worse it was, the better they liked it. Northern
merchants were in favor of it--it 'would conciliate the
South.' Northern ministers in all the churches of commerce
baptized it, defended it out of the Old Testament, or the
New Testament. The Senator of Boston gave it his mighty
aid,--he went through the land a huckster of Slavery,
peddling Atheism: the Representative of Boston gave it his
vote. Their constituents sustained both! All the great
cities of the North executed the bill. The leading Journals
of Boston advised the merchants to withhold all commercial
intercourse from Towns which opposed Kidnapping. There was a
'Union Meeting' at Faneuil Hall. You remember the men on the
platform: the speeches are not forgotten. The doctrine that
there is a Law of God above the passions of the multitude
and the ambition of their leaders, was treated with scorn
and hooting: a loud guffaw of vulgar ribaldry went up
against the Justice of the Infinite God! All the great
cities did the same. Atheism was inaugurated as the first
principle of Republican government; in politics, religion
makes men mad! Mr. Clay declared that 'no Northern gentleman
will ever help return a fugitive Slave!' What took place at
Philadelphia? New York? Cincinnati?--nay, at Boston? The
Northern churches of commerce thought Slavery was a
blessing, Kidnapping a 'grace.' The Democrats and Whigs vie
with each other in devotion to the fugitive slave bill. The
'Compromises' are the golden rule. The North conquered her
prejudices. The South sees this, and makes another demand.
Why not? I am glad of it. She serves us right."
"In 1775, what if it had been told the men all red with
battle at Lexington and Bunker Hill,--'your sons will gird
the Court House with chains to kidnap a man; Boston will
vote for a Bill which puts the liberty of any man in the
hands of a Commissioner, to be paid twice as much for making
a Slave as for declaring a freeman; and Boston will call out
its soldiers to hunt a man through its streets!' What if on
the 19th of April, 1775, when Samuel Adams said, 'Oh! what a
glorious morning is this!' as he heard the tidings of war in
the little village where he passed the night,--what if it
had been told him,--'On the 19th of April, seventy-six years
from this day, will your City of Boston land a poor youth at
Savannah, having violated her own laws, and stained her
Magistrates' hands, in order to put an innocent man in a
Slave-master's jail?' What if it had been told him that
Ellen Craft must fly out of Democratic Boston, to Monarchic,
Theocratic, Aristocratic England, to find shelter for her
limbs, her connubial innocence, and the virtue of her
woman's heart? I think Samuel would have cursed the day in
which it was said a man-child was born, and America was
free! What if it had been told Mayhew and Belknap, that in
the pulpits of Boston, to defend kidnapping should be
counted to a man as righteousness? They could not have
believed it. They did not know what baseness could suck the
Northern breast, and still be base."[219]
[Footnote 219: 1 Parker's Additional Speeches, p. 351, 352, 357-359,
368, 369.]
You will think all this is good morality; but Mr. Curtis in 1836,
maintained that kidnapping in Massachusetts, would "promote harmony
and good-will where it is extremely desirable to promote it, encourage
frequent intercourse, and soften prejudice by increasing acquaintance,
and tend to peace and good-will." Nay, that it may be "perfectly
consistent with our policy ... _to interfere actively to enable the
citizens of those States_ [the slave States] _to enjoy those
institutions at home_." "Slavery is not immoral;" "By the law of this
Commonwealth slavery is not immoral."[220]
[Footnote 220: Med Case, p. 9, 11.]
After Commissioner Loring had kidnapped Anthony Burns, I attended the
meeting at Faneuil Hall, and spoke. Gentlemen, I did not finish the
speech I had begun, for news came that an attack was made on the Court
House, and the meeting was thrown into confusion. I did not speak in a
corner, but in the old Cradle of Liberty. Here is the report of the
speech which was made by a phonographer, and published in the
newspapers of the time--I have no other notes of it. You shall see if
there be a misdemeanor in it. Here is the speech:--
"FELLOW-SUBJECTS OF VIRGINIA--[Loud cries of 'No,' 'no,' and 'you must
take that back!'] FELLOW-CITIZENS OF BOSTON, then--['Yes,' 'yes,']--I
come to condole with you at this second disgrace which is heaped on
the city made illustrious by _some_ of those faces that were once so
familiar to our eyes. [Alluding to the portraits which _once hung_
conspicuously in Faneuil Hall, but which had been removed to obscure
and out-of-the-way locations.] Fellow-citizens--A deed which Virginia
commands has been done in the city of John Hancock and the 'brace of
Adamses.' It was done by a Boston hand. It was a Boston man who issued
the warrant; it was a Boston Marshal who put it in execution; they are
Boston men who are seeking to kidnap a citizen of Massachusetts, and
send him into slavery for ever and ever. It is our fault that it is
so. Eight years ago, a merchant of Boston 'kidnapped a man on the high
road between Faneuil Hall and Old Quincy,' at 12 o'clock,--at the noon
of day,--and the next day, mechanics of this city exhibited the
half-eagles they had received for their share of the spoils in
enslaving a brother man. You called a meeting in this hall. It was as
crowded as it is now. I stood side by side with my friend and former
neighbor, your honorable and noble Chairman to-night [George R.
Russell, of West Roxbury], [Loud Cheers,] while this man who had
fought for liberty in Greece, and been imprisoned for that sacred
cause in the dungeons of Poland, [Dr. Samuel G. Howe,] stood here and
introduced to the audience that 'old man eloquent,' John Quincy Adams.
[Loud Cheers.]
"It was the last time he ever stood in Faneuil Hall. He came to defend
the unalienable rights of a friendless negro slave, kidnapped in
Boston. There is even no picture of John Quincy Adams to-night.
"A Suffolk Grand-Jury would find no indictment against the Boston
merchant for kidnapping that man. ['Shame,' 'shame.'] If Boston had
spoken then, we should not have been here to-night. We should have had
no fugitive slave bill. When that bill passed, we fired a hundred
guns.