stood on this platform,--he is a Judge of the Supreme Court now,--and
he said--When a certain 'Reverend gentleman' is indicted for perjury,
I should like to ask him how he will answer the charge? And when that
'Reverend gentleman' rose, and asked, 'Do you want an answer to your
question?' Faneuil Hall cried out,--'No,' 'no,'--'Throw him over!' Had
Faneuil Hall spoken then on the side of Truth and Freedom, we should
not now be the subjects of Virginia.
"Yes, we are the vassals of Virginia. She reaches her arm over the
graves of our mothers, and kidnaps men in the city of the Puritans;
over the graves of Samuel Adams and John Hancock. [Cries of 'Shame!']
'Shame!' so I say; but who is to blame? 'There is no north,' said Mr.
Webster. There is none. The South goes clear up to the Canada line.
No, gentlemen, there is no Boston to-day. There _was_ a Boston once.
Now, there is a North suburb to the city of Alexandria,--that is what
Boston is. [Laughter.] And you and I, fellow-subjects of the State of
Virginia--[Cries of 'no,' 'no.' 'Take that back again.']--I will take
it back when you show me the fact is not so.--Men and brothers,
(brothers, at any rate,) I am not a young man; I have heard hurrahs
and cheers for liberty many times; I have not seen a great many deeds
done for liberty. I ask you, are we to have deeds as well as words?
['Yes,' 'yes,' and loud cheers.]
"Now, brethren, you are brothers at any rate, whether citizens of
Massachusetts or subjects of Virginia--I am a minister--and,
fellow-citizens of Boston, there are two great laws in this country;
one of them is the LAW OF SLAVERY; that law is declared to be a
'finality.' Once the Constitution was formed 'to establish justice,
promote tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves
and our posterity.' _Now_, the Constitution is not to secure liberty;
it is to extend slavery into Nebraska. And when slavery is established
there, in order to show what it is, there comes a sheriff from
Alexandria, to kidnap a man in the city of Boston, and he gets a Judge
of Probate, in the county of Suffolk, to issue a writ, and another
Boston man to execute that writ! [Cries of 'shame,' 'shame.']
"Slavery tramples on the Constitution; it treads down State Rights.
Where are the Rights of Massachusetts? A fugitive slave bill
Commissioner has got them all in his pocket. Where is the trial by
jury? Watson Freeman has it under his Marshal's staff. Where is the
great writ of personal replevin, which our fathers wrested, several
hundred years ago, from the tyrants who once lorded it over Great
Britain? Judge Sprague trod it under his feet! Where is the sacred
right of _habeas corpus_? Deputy Marshal Riley can crush it in his
hands, and Boston does not say any thing against it. Where are the
laws of Massachusetts forbidding State edifices to be used as prisons
for the incarceration of fugitives? They, too, are trampled underfoot.
'Slavery is a finality.'
"These men come from Virginia, to kidnap a man here. Once, this was
Boston; now, it is a Northern suburb of Alexandria. At first, when
they carried a fugitive slave from Boston, they thought it was a
difficult thing to do it. They had to get a Mayor to help them; they
had to put chains round the Court House; they had to call out the
'Sims Brigade'; it took nine days to do it. Now, they are so confident
that we are subjects of Virginia, that they do not even put chains
round the Court House; the police have nothing to do with it. I was
told to-day that one of the officers of the city said to twenty-eight
police-men, 'If any man in the employment of the city meddles in this
business, he will be discharged from service, without a hearing.'
[Great applause.] Well, gentlemen, how do you think they received
that declaration? They shouted, and hurrahed, and gave three cheers.
[Renewed applause.] My friend here would not have had the honor of
presiding over you to-night, if application had been made a little
sooner to the Mayor. Another gentleman told me that, when that man
(the Mayor) was asked to preside at this meeting, he said that he
regretted that all his time to-night was previously engaged. If he had
known it earlier, he said, he might have been able to make
arrangements to preside. When the man was arrested, he told the
Marshal he regretted it, and that his sympathies were wholly with the
slave. [Loud applause.] Fellow-citizens, remember that word. Hold your
Mayor to it, and let it be seen that he has got a background and a
foreground, which will authorize him to repeat that word in public,
and act it out in Faneuil Hall. I say, so confident are the slave
agents now, that they can carry off their slave in the daytime, that
they do not put chains round the Court House; they have got no
soldiers billeted in Faneuil Hall, as in 1851. They think they can
carry this man off to-morrow morning in a cab. [Voices--'They can't do
it.' 'Let's see them try.']
"I say, there are two great laws in this country. One is the slave
law. That is the law of the President of the United States; it is the
law of the Commissioner; it is the law of every Marshal, and of every
meanest ruffian whom the Marshal hires to execute his behests.
"There is another law, which my friend, Mr. Phillips, has described in
language such as I cannot equal, and therefore shall not try; I only
state it in its plainest terms. It is the Law of the People when they
are sure they are right and determined to go ahead. [Cheers and much
confusion.]
"Now, gentlemen, there was a Boston once, and you and I had
fathers--brave fathers; and mothers who stirred up those fathers to
manly deeds. Well, gentlemen, once it came to pass that the British
Parliament enacted a 'law'--_they_ called it law--issuing stamps here.
What did your fathers do on that occasion? They said, in the language
of Algernon Sydney, quoted in your resolutions, 'that which is not
just is not law, and that which is not law ought not to be
obeyed.'--[Cheers.] They did not obey the stamp act. They did not call
it law, and the man that did call it a law, here, eighty years ago,
would have had a very warm coat of tar and feathers on him. They
called it an 'act,' and they took the Commissioner who was here to
execute it, took him solemnly, manfully,--_they didn't hurt a hair of
his head_; they were non-resistants, of a very potent sort,
[Cheers,]--and made him take a solemn oath that he would not issue a
single stamp. He was brother-in-law of the Governor of the State, the
servant of a royal master, 'exceedingly respectable,' of great
wealth, and once very popular; but they took him, and made him swear
not to execute his commission; and he kept his oath, and the stamp act
went to its own place, and you know what that was. [Cheers.] That was
an instance of the people going behind a wicked law to enact Absolute
Justice into their statute, and making it Common Law. You know what
they did with the tea.
"Well, gentlemen, in the South there is a public opinion, it is a very
wicked public opinion, which is stronger than law. When a colored
seaman goes to Charleston from Boston, he is clapped instantly into
jail, and kept there until the vessel is ready to sail, and the Boston
merchant or master must pay the bill, and the Boston black man must
feel the smart. That is a wicked example, set by the State of South
Carolina. When Mr. Hoar, one of our most honored and respected
fellow-citizens, was sent to Charleston to test the legality of this
iniquitous law, the citizens of Charleston ordered him off the
premises, and he was glad to escape to save himself from further
outrage. There was no violence, no guns fired. That was an instance of
the strength of public opinion--of a most unjust and iniquitous public
opinion."
* * * * *
"Well, gentlemen, I say there is one law--slave law; it is everywhere.
There is another law, which also is a finality; and that law, it is in
your hands and your arms, and you can put it in execution, just when
you see fit.
"Gentlemen, I am a clergyman and a man of peace; I love peace. But
there is a means, and there is an end; Liberty is the end, and
sometimes peace is not the means towards it. [Applause.] Now, I want
to ask you what you are going to do. [A voice--'shoot, shoot.'] There
are ways of managing this matter without shooting anybody. Be sure
that these men who have kidnapped a man in Boston, are cowards, every
mother's son of them; and if we stand up there resolutely, and declare
that this man shall not go out of the city of Boston, _without
shooting a gun_--[cries of 'that's it,' and great applause,]--then he
won't go back. Now, I am going to propose that when you adjourn, it be
to meet at _Court Square, to-morrow morning at nine o'clock_. As many
as are in favor of that motion will raise their hands. [A large number
of hands were raised, but many voices cried out, 'Let's go to-night,'
'let's pay a visit to the slave-catchers at the Revere House,' etc.
'Put that question.'] Do you propose to go to the Revere House
to-night, then show your hands. [Some hands were held up.] It is not a
vote. We shall meet at _Court Square, at nine o'clock to-morrow
morning_."
* * * * *
On the following Sunday, May 28, in place of the usual Scripture
passages, I extemporized the following "Lesson for the Day," which on
Monday appeared in the newspapers:--
"Since last we came together, there has been a man stolen in the city
of our fathers. It is not the first; it may not be the last. He is now
in the great slave-pen in the city of Boston. He is there against the
law of the Commonwealth, which, if I am rightly informed, in such
cases prohibits the use of State edifices as United States jails."
"A man has been killed by violence. Some say he was killed by his own
coadjutors: I can easily believe it; there is evidence enough that
they were greatly frightened. They were not United States soldiers,
but volunteers from the streets of Boston, who, for their pay, went
into the Court House to assist in kidnapping a brother man. They were
so cowardly that they could not use the simple cutlasses they had in
their hands, but smote right and left, like ignorant and frightened
ruffians as they are. They may have slain their brother or not--I
cannot tell."
"Why is Boston in this confusion to-day? The fugitive slave bill
Commissioner has just now been sowing the wind, that we may reap the
whirlwind. The old fugitive slave bill Commissioner stands back; he
has gone to look after his 'personal popularity.' But when
Commissioner Curtis does not dare appear in this matter, another man
comes forward, and for the first time seeks to kidnap his man also in
the city of Boston."
"But he has sown the wind, and we are reaping the whirlwind. All this
confusion is his work. He knew he was stealing a Man born with the
same unalienable right to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness,' as himself. He knew the slaveholders had no more right to
Anthony Burns than to his own daughter. He knew the consequences of
stealing a man. He knew that there are men in Boston who have not yet
conquered their prejudices--men who respect the Higher Law of God. He
knew there would be a meeting at Faneuil Hall, gatherings in the
streets. He knew there would be violence."
"Edward Greeley Loring, Judge of Probate for the County of Suffolk, in
the State of Massachusetts, fugitive slave bill Commissioner of the
United States, before these citizens of Boston, on Ascension Sunday,
assembled to worship God, I charge you with the death of that man who
was killed on last Friday night. He was your fellow-servant in
kidnapping. He dies at your hand. You fired the shot which makes his
wife a widow, his child an orphan. I charge you with the peril of
twelve men, arrested for murder, and on trial for their lives. I
charge you with filling the Court House with one hundred and
eighty-four hired ruffians of the United States, and alarming not only
this city for her liberties that are in peril, but stirring up the
whole Commonwealth of Massachusetts with indignation, which no man
knows how to stop--which no man can stop. You have done it all!"[221]
[Footnote 221: 2 Parker's Additional, 74, 75, 81, 83.]
June 4th, I preached "of the New Crime against Humanity," and said:--
"Wednesday, the 24th of May, the city was all calm and still. The poor
black man was at work with one of his own nation, earning an honest
livelihood. A Judge of Probate, Boston born and Boston bred, a man in
easy circumstances, a Professor in Harvard College, was sitting in his
office, and with a single spurt of his pen he dashes off the liberty
of a man--a citizen of Massachusetts. He kidnaps a man endowed by his
Creator with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness. He leaves the writ with the Marshal, and goes home to
his family, caresses his children, and enjoys his cigar. The frivolous
smoke curls round his frivolous head, and at length he lays him down
to sleep, and, I suppose, such dreams as haunt such heads. But when he
wakes next morn, all the winds of indignation, wrath, and honest
scorn, are let loose. Before night, they are blowing all over this
commonwealth--ay, before another night they have gone to the
Mississippi, and wherever the lightning messenger can tell the tale.
So have I read in an old mediaeval legend that one summer afternoon,
there came up a 'shape, all hot from Tartarus,' from hell below, but
garmented and garbed to represent a civil-suited man, masked with
humanity. He walked quiet and decorous through Milan's stately
streets, and scattered from his hand an invisible dust. It touched the
walls; it lay on the streets; it ascended to the cross on the
minster's utmost top. It went down to the beggar's den. Peacefully he
walked through the streets, vanished and went home. But the next
morning, the pestilence was in Milan, and ere a week had sped half her
population were in their graves; and half the other half, crying that
hell was clutching at their hearts, fled from the reeking City of the
Plague!"
"I have studied the records of crime--it is a part of my ministry. I
do not find that any College Professor has ever been hanged for murder
in all the Anglo-Saxon family of men, till Harvard College had that
solitary shame. Is not that enough? Now she is the first to have a
Professor that kidnaps men. 'The Athens of America' furnished both!
"I can understand how a man commits a crime of passion, or
covetousness, or rage, nay, of revenge, or of ambition. But for a man
in Boston, with no passion, no covetousness, no rage, with no ambition
nor revenge, to steal a poor negro, to send him into bondage,--I
cannot comprehend the fact. I can understand the consciousness of a
lion, not a kidnapper's heart."
"But there is another court. The Empsons and the Dudleys have been
summoned there before: Jeffreys and Scroggs, the Kanes, and the
Curtises, and the Lorings, must one day travel the same unwelcome
road. Imagine the scene after man's mythological way. 'Edward, where
is thy brother, Anthony?' 'I know not; am I my brother's keeper,
Lord?' 'Edward, where is thy brother, Anthony?' 'Oh, Lord, he was
friendless, and so I smote him; he was poor, and I starved him of more
than life. He owned nothing but his African body. I took that away
from him, and gave it to another man!'
"Then listen to the voice of the Crucified--'Did I not tell thee, when
on earth, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy understanding
and thy heart?"' 'But I thought thy kingdom was not of this world.'
"'Did I not tell thee that thou shouldst love thy neighbor as thyself?
Where is Anthony, thy brother? I was a stranger, and you sought my
life; naked, and you rent away my skin; in prison, and you delivered
me to the tormentors--fate far worse than death. Inasmuch as you did
it to Anthony Burns, you did it unto me.'"[222]
[Footnote 222: Parker's Additional, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172.]
* * * * *
Gentlemen, I suppose the honorable Judge had the last three addresses
in his mind while concocting his charge to the Grand-Jury which
refused to find a bill. I infer this partly from what took place in
the room of the next Grand-Jury which found this indictment, and
partly also from another source which you will look at for a moment.
I preach on Sundays in the Music Hall, which is owned by a Corporation
who rent it to the 28th Congregational Society for their religious
meetings. Mr. Charles P. Curtis, father-in-law of the Hon. Judge
Curtis, and step-brother of Commissioner Loring, and a more distant
relation but intimate friend of George T. Curtis, was then president
of that Corporation, and one of its directors. At a meeting of the
corporation, held presently after the kidnapping of Mr. Burns, Mr.
Charles P. Curtis and his family endeavored to procure a vote of the
Corporation to instruct the directors "to terminate the lease of the
28th Congregational Society as soon as it can be legally done, and not
to renew it." Mr. Charles P. Curtis managed this matter clandestinely,
but not with his usual adroitness, for at the meeting he disclosed the
cause of his act,--that _Mr. Parker had called his brother a
murderer_, probably referring to the passage just read from the
"Lesson for the Day." But he took nothing by that motion.[223]
[Footnote 223: See the communications of Messrs. Chas. P. Curtis and
Thomas B. Curtis, in the Boston Daily Advertiser of June, 1854; and
the other articles setting forth the facts of the case.]
What influence this private and familistic disposition had in framing
the Judge's charge, I leave it for you and the People of America to
determine. You also can conjecture whether it had any effect on Mr.
Greenough, the other son-in-law of Mr. Charles P. Curtis, who refused
to return my salutation, and who, "by a miracle," was put on the new
Grand-Jury after the old one was discharged, and then was so "very
anxious to procure an indictment" against me. I leave all that with
you. You can easily appreciate the efforts made to silence not only my
Sunday preaching, but also the magnificent eloquence of Wendell
Phillips; yes, to choke all generous speech, in order that kidnappers
might pursue their vocation with none to molest or make them afraid.
But, Gentlemen, I fear you do not yet quite understand the arrogance
of our Southern masters, and the fear and hatred they bear towards all
who dare speak a word in behalf of the Rights of outraged Humanity.
The gag-law of Congress which silenced the House of Representatives
till John Quincy Adams, that noble son of a noble sire, burst through
the Southern chain; the violation of the United States mails to detect
"incendiary publications;" the torturing of men and women for an
opinion against Slavery--all these are notorious; but they and all
that I have yet stated of the action of the Federal Courts in the
fugitive slave bill cases, with the "opinions" of Northern Judges
already mentioned, do not fill up the cup of bitterness and poison
which is to be poured down our throats. Let me, therefore, here give
you one supplementary piece of evidence to prove how intensely the
South hates the Northern Freedom of Speech. I purposely select this
case from a period when Southern arrogance and Northern servility were
far less infamous than now.
About twenty years ago Mr. R.G. Williams of New York published this
sentence in a newspaper called the Emancipator,--"God commands and all
nature cries out, that man should not be held as property. The system
of making men property has plunged 2,250,000 of our fellow countrymen
into the deepest physical and moral degradation, and they are every
moment sinking deeper."
For this he was indicted by a Grand-Jury of the State of Alabama, and
the Governor of that State made a demand on the Executive of New York
insisting that Mr. Williams should be delivered up to take his trial
in Alabama--a State where he had never been! But the New York
Governor, after consulting with his law-advisers, did not come to the
conclusion that it was consistent with the public policy of New York
to "interfere actively" and promote Slavery in Alabama. _So he refused
to deliver up Mr. Williams!_[224]
[Footnote 224: Med Case, p. 25.]
Gentlemen of the Jury, before you can convict me of the crime charged,
you must ask three several sets of questions, and be satisfied of all
these things which I will now set forth.
I. THE QUESTION OF FACT. Did I do the deed charged, and obstruct
Marshal Freeman while in the peace of the United States, and
discharging his official duty? This is a quite complicated question.
Here are the several parts of it:--
1. Was there any illegal obstruction or opposition at all made to the
Marshal? This is not clear. True, an attack was made on the doors and
windows of the Court House, but that is not necessarily an attack on
the Marshal or his premises. He has a right in certain rooms of the
Court House, and this he has in virtue of a lease. He has also a right
to use the passage-ways of the house, in common with other persons and
the People in general. His rights as Tenant are subject to the terms
of his lease and to the law which determines the relation of Tenant
and Landlord. Marshal Freeman as tenant has no more rights than
Freeman Marshal, or John Doe, or Rachel Roe would have under the same
circumstances. Of course he had a legal right to defend himself if
attacked, and to close his own doors, bar and fortify the premises he
rented against the illegal violence of others. But neither his lease
nor the laws of the land authorized him to close the other doors, or
to obstruct the passages, no more than to obstruct the Square or the
Street. No lease, no law gave him that right.
Now there have been three secret examinations of witnesses relative to
this assault, before three Grand-Juries. No evidence has been offered
which shows _that any attack was made on the premises of the Marshal_.
The Supreme Court of Massachusetts was in session at the moment the
attack was made on the Court House; the venerable Chief Justice was on
the Bench; the jury had retired to consider the capital case then
pending, and were expected to return with their verdict. The People
had a right in the court-room, a right in the passage-ways and doors
which lead thither. That court had not ordered the room to be cleared
or the doors to be shut. Marshal Freeman closed the outer doors of the
Court House, and thus debarred men of their right to enter a
Massachusetts Court of Justice solemnly deciding a capital case. You
are to consider whether an attack on the outer doors of the Court
House, is an illegal attack on the Marshal who had shut those doors
without any legal authority. If you decide this point as the
government wishes, then you will proceed to the next question.
2. Did I actually obstruct him? If not, then the inquiry stops here.
You answer "not guilty." But if I did, then it is worth while to
consider how I obstructed him. (1.) Was it by a physical act, by
material force; or, (2.) by a metaphysical act, immaterial or
spiritual force--a word, thought, a feeling, a wish, approbation,
assent, consent, "evincing an express liking."
3. Was Marshal Freeman, at the time of the obstruction, in the peace
of the United States, or was he himself violating the law thereof? For
if he were violating the law and thereby injuring some other man, and
I obstructed him in that injury, then I am free from all legal guilt,
and did a citizen's duty in obstructing his illegal conduct. Now it
appears that he was kidnapping and stealing Anthony Burns for the
purpose of making him the slave of one Suttle of Virginia, who wished
to sell him and acquire money thereby; and that Mr. Freeman did this
at the instigation of Commissioner Loring who was entitled to receive
ten dollars if he enslaved Mr. Burns, and five only for setting him
free. It appears also that Marshal Freeman was to receive large,
official money for this kidnapping, and such honor as this
Administration, and the Hunker newspapers, and lower law divines can
bestow.