at,--a Despotism which is worse for this age than the Stuarts' tyranny
for that time. You see its successive steps of encroachment. Behold
what it has done within ten years. It has made Slavery perpetual in
Florida; has annexed Texas, a Slave State as big as the kingdom of
France; has fought the Mexican War, with Northern money, and spread
bondage over Utah, New Mexico, and California; it has given Texas ten
millions of Northern dollars to help Slavery withal; it has passed the
fugitive slave bill and kidnapped men in the West, in the Middle
States, and even in our own New England; it has given ten millions of
dollars for a little strip of worthless land, the Mesilla valley,
whereon to make a Slave Railroad and carry bondage from the Atlantic
to the Pacific; it has repealed the Prohibition of Slavery, and spread
the mildew of the South all over Kansas and Nebraska. Ask your
capitalists, who have bought Missouri lands and railroads, how their
stock looks just now; not only your Liberty but even their Money is in
peril. You know the boast of Mr. Toombs. Gentlemen, you know what the
United States Courts have done--with poisoned weapons they have struck
deadly blows at Freedom. You know Sharkey and Grier and Kane. You
recollect the conduct of Kidnappers' Courts at Milwaukie, Sandusky,
Cincinnati, Philadelphia--in the Hall of Independence. But why need I
wander so far? Alas! you know too well what has been done in Boston,
our own Boston, the grave of Puritan piety. You remember the Union
Meeting, Ellen Craft, Sims, chains around the Court House, the Judges
crawling under, soldiers in the street, drunk, smiting at the
citizens; you do not forget Anthony Burns, the Marshal's guard, the
loaded cannon in place of Justice, soldiers again in the streets
smiting at and wounding the citizens. You recollect all this--the 19th
of April, 1851, Boston delivering an innocent man at Savannah to be a
slave for ever, and that day scourged in his jail while the hirelings
who enthralled him were feasted at their Inn;--Anniversary week last
year--a Boston Judge of Probate, the appointed guardian of orphans,
kidnapping a poor and friendless man! You cannot forget these things,
no, never!
You know who did all this: a single family--the Honorable Judge
Curtis, with his kinsfolk and friends, himself most subtly active with
all his force throughout this work. When Mr. Webster prostituted
himself to the Slave Power this family went out and pimped for him in
the streets; they paraded in the newspapers, at the Revere House, and
in public letters; they beckoned and made signs at Faneuil Hall. That
crime of Sodom brought Daniel Webster to his grave at Marshfield, a
mighty warning not to despise the Law of the Infinite God; but that
sin of Gomorrah, it put the Hon. Benj. R. Curtis on this Bench; gave
him his judicial power to construct his "law," construct his "jury,"
to indict and try me. Try me! No, Gentlemen, it is you, your wives and
your children, who are up for swift condemnation this day. Will you
wait, will you add sin to sin, till God shall rain fire and brimstone
on your heads, and a Dead Sea shall cover the place once so green and
blossoming with American Liberty? Decide your own fate. When the
Judges are false let the Juries be faithful, and we have "a crowning
mercy" without cannon, and the cause of Justice is secure. For "when
wicked men seem nearest to their hopes, the godly man is furthest from
his fears."
You know my "offence," Gentlemen. I have confessed more than the
government could prove. You are the "Country:" the Nation by twelve
Delegates is present here to-day. In the name of America, of mankind,
you are to judge of the Law, the Fact, and the Application of the Law
to the Fact. You are to decide whether you will spread Slavery and the
Consequences of Slavery all over the North; whether Boston, New
England, all the North, shall kidnap other Ellen Crafts, other Thomas
Sims, other Anthony Burns,--whether Sharkey and Grier, and Kane and
Curtis, shall be Tyrants over you--forbidding all Freedom of Speech:
or whether Right and Justice, the Christian Religion, the natural
service of the Infinite God shall bless our wide land with the
numberless Beatitudes of Humanity. Should you command me to be fined
and go to jail, I should take it very cheerfully, counting it more
honor to be inside of a jail in the austere silence of my dungeon,
rather than outside of it, with a faithless Jury, guilty of such
treason to their Country and their God. But, forgive me! you cannot
commit such a crime against Humanity. Pardon the monstrous figure of
my speech,--it is only conceivable, not also possible. These Judges
could do it--their speeches, their actions, that Charge, this
Indictment, proves all that--but you cannot;--not you. You are the
Representatives of the People, the Country, not idiotic in Conscience
and the Affections.
Gentlemen, I am a minister of Religion. It is my function to teach
what is absolutely true and absolutely right. I am the servant of no
sect,--how old soever, venerable and widely spread. I claim the same
religious Rights with Luther and Calvin, with Budha and Mohammed; yes,
with Moses and Jesus,--the unalienable Right to serve the God of
Nature in my own way. I preach the Religion which belongs to Human
Nature, as I understand it, which the Infinite God imperishably writes
thereon,--Natural Piety, love of the infinitely perfect God, Natural
Morality, the keeping of every law He has written on the body and in
the soul of man, especially by loving and serving his creatures. Many
wrong things I doubtless do, for which I must ask the forgiveness of
mankind. But do you suppose I can keep the fugitive slave bill, obey
these Judges, and kidnap my own Parishioners? It is no part of my
"Christianity" to "send the mother that bore me into eternal bondage."
Do you think I can suffer Commissioner Curtis and Commissioner Loring
to steal my friends,--out of my meeting-house? Gentlemen, when God
bids me do right and this Court bids me do wrong, I shall not pretend
to "obey both." I am willing enough to suffer all that you will ever
lay on me. But I will not do such a wrong, nor allow such wickedness
to be done--so help me God! How could I teach Truth, Justice, Piety,
if I stole men; if I allowed Saunders, Jeffreys, Scroggs, or Sharkey,
Grier, Kane, or in one word, Curtis, to steal them? I love my Country,
my kindred of Humanity; I love my God, Father and Mother of the white
man and the black; and am I to suffer the Liberty of America to be
trod under the hoof of Slaveholders, Slave-drivers; yes, of the
judicial slaves of slaveholders' slave-drivers? I was neither born nor
bred for that. I drew my first breath in a little town not far off, a
poor little town where the farmers and mechanics first unsheathed that
Revolutionary sword which, after eight years of hewing, clove asunder
the Gordian knot that bound America to the British yoke. One raw
morning in spring--it will be eighty years the 19th of this
month--Hancock and Adams, the Moses and Aaron of that Great
Deliverance, were both at Lexington; they also had "obstructed an
officer" with brave words. British soldiers, a thousand strong, came
to seize them and carry them over sea for trial, and so nip the bud of
Freedom auspiciously opening in that early spring. The town militia
came together before daylight "for training." A great, tall man, with
a large head and a high, wide brow, their Captain,--one who "had seen
service,"--marshalled them into line, numbering but seventy, and bad
"every man load his piece with powder and ball." "I will order the
first man shot that runs away," said he, when some faltered; "Don't
fire unless fired upon, but if they want to have a war,--let it begin
here." Gentlemen, you know what followed: those farmers and mechanics
"fired the shot heard round the world." A little monument covers the
bones of such as before had pledged their fortune and their sacred
honor to the Freedom of America, and that day gave it also their
lives. I was born in that little town, and bred up amid the memories
of that day. When a boy my mother lifted me up, one Sunday, in her
religious, patriotic arms, and held me while I read the first
monumental line I ever saw:--
"SACRED TO LIBERTY AND THE RIGHTS OF MANKIND."
Since then I have studied the memorial marbles of Greece and Rome in
many an ancient town; nay, on Egyptian Obelisks have read what was
written before the Eternal roused up Moses to lead Israel out of
Egypt, but no chiselled stone has ever stirred me to such emotions as
those rustic names of men who fell
"IN THE SACRED CAUSE OF GOD AND THEIR COUNTRY."
Gentlemen, the Spirit of Liberty, the Love of Justice, was early
fanned into a flame in my boyish heart. That monument covers the bones
of my own kinsfolk; it was their blood which reddened the long, green
grass at Lexington. It is my own name which stands chiselled on that
stone; the tall Captain who marshalled his fellow farmers and
mechanics into stern array and spoke such brave and dangerous words as
opened the War of American Independence,--the last to leave the
field,--was my father's father. I learned to read out of his Bible,
and with a musket he that day captured from the foe, I learned also
another religious lesson, that
"REBELLION TO TYRANTS IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD."
I keep them both, "Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind," to
use them both "In the Sacred Cause of God and my Country."
Gentlemen of the Jury, and you my fellow-countrymen of the North, I
leave the matter with you. Say "Guilty!" You cannot do it. "Not
Guilty." I know you will, for you remember there is another Court, not
of fugitive slave bill law, where we shall all be tried by the Justice
of the Infinite God. Hearken to the last verdict, "INASMUCH AS YE HAVE
DONE IT UNTO ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE MY BRETHREN, YE HAVE DONE IT
UNTO ME."
END.
ERRATA.
Page 19, line 16 from top, instead of _rest_, read _government_.
" 23 " 10 " " " " 1618, read 1215.
" 76 " 2 " " " " _Aoncilia_, read _Ancilia_.
" 78 " 3 " bottom, " " _not_, read _or_.
" 84 " 11 " " " " _promoting_, read _perverting_.
" 89 " 18 " " omit _his_, before _vengeance_.
OTHER WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
A DISCOURSE OF MATTERS PERTAINING TO RELIGION. 1 Vol. 12mo.
New Edition will appear in December. $1.25
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. From the German of De
Wette. 2d edition. 2 Vols. 8vo. 3.75
CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 1 Vol. 12mo. New Edition
will soon appear. 1.25
OCCASIONAL SERMONS AND SPEECHES. 2 Vols. 12mo. 2.50
TEN SERMONS OF RELIGION. 1 Vol. 12mo. 1.00
SERMONS OF THEISM, ATHEISM, AND THE POPULAR THEOLOGY. 1 Vol.
12mo. 1.25
ADDITIONAL SERMONS AND SPEECHES. 2 Vols. 12mo. 2.50
PAMPHLETS.
TWO SERMONS ON LEAVING THE OLD AND ENTERING THE NEW PLACE
OF WORSHIP. (1852.) 20
DISCOURSE OF DANIEL WEBSTER. (1853.) Cloth. 50
A SERMON OF OLD AGE. (1854.) 15
THE NEW CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. (1854.) 20
THE LAWS OF GOD AND THE STATUTES OF MAN. (1854.) 15
THE DANGERS WHICH THREATEN THE RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA. (1854.) 20
THE MORAL DANGERS INCIDENT TO PROSPERITY. (1855.) 15
CONSEQUENCES OF AN IMMORAL PRINCIPLE. (1855.) 15
FUNCTION OF A MINISTER. (1855.) 20
TWO SERMONS IN PROCEEDINGS OF PROGRESSIVE FRIENDS. (1855.) 15
End of Project Gutenberg's The Trial of Theodore Parker, by Theodore Parker