The awful iniquity of our nation culminated in the enactment of the
_Fugitive Slave Law_, which, as Edmund Quincy said at the time,
stood, as it now stands, “a piece of diabolical ingenuity, for the
accomplishment of a devilish purpose, _without a rival_ among all the
tyrannical enactments or edicts of servile parliaments or despotic
monarchs.” It was the essential article of a political conglomerate,
prepared by the Arch Compromiser, Henry Clay, which was called the
Omnibus Bill; some parts of which, he vainly thought, would conciliate
the Northern States to the reception of the whole. It provided for
the admission of California into our Union, with an antislavery
Constitution; for the organization of two other Territories without
the prohibition of slavery; the extension of the southwestern boundary
of Texas to the Rio Grande; the abolition of the slave-trade in the
District of Columbia, with the guaranty of slavery to its inhabitants
until they should see fit to abolish it; and the perpetuity of the
interstate slave-trade; but infinitely worse than any of these
objectionable parts were the stringent measures it proposed for the
recovery of fugitives from slavery. Stripped of the verbiage of legal
enactments, the provisions of this abominable law were as follows:--
1. The claimant of any person who had escaped, or should escape
from slavery in any State or Territory, might apply to any Court
of Record or Judge thereof, describe the fugitive and make
satisfactory proof that he or she owed service or labor to said
claimant. Thereupon the Court, or in vacation the Judge, was
required to cause a record to be made of the description of the
alleged fugitive, and of the proof of his or her enslavement, and
give an attested copy of that record to the claimant; which copy
was required to be received by any court, judge, or commissioner in
any other State or Territory of the Union, as full and conclusive
evidence that the person claimed, and so described, was a fugitive
from slavery and owed service to the claimant, and therefore should
be delivered up.
Any marshal or deputy who should refuse to arrest such a fugitive
was to be fined _one thousand dollars_. And if, after having
arrested him or her, the fugitive should in any way escape from his
custody, the marshal or deputy should be held liable to pay to the
claimant the value of the runaway.
And any person who should in any way prevent the claimant or his
agent or assistants from getting possession of the fugitive, by
hiding him or helping him to escape, or by open opposition to his
would-be captor,--such offender was to be fined _one thousand
dollars_ for violating this _righteous_ law; and be liable to pay
another _thousand dollars_ to the claimant of the fugitive.
In order that every facility should be afforded to _our slaveholding
brethren_ to retake their fleeing property, many commissioners were
ordered to be appointed in all suitable places (in addition to the
courts and judges) whose especial duty it should be to attend to cases
that might arise under the Fugitive Slave Law. And each commissioner or
judge, who found the accused guilty of having fled from bondage, was to
receive a fee of ten dollars. But if the proof adduced by the claimant
did not satisfy him that the accused was a fugitive from his service,
then the judge or commissioner was to receive only five dollars. Thus
bribery was by this law superadded to every other device to enable the
American slaveholder to recover his escaped slave, and return him or
her to a still more cruel bondage.
Nor was this all that was atrociously wicked in the enactment. It
provided further that, while the claimant or his agent might give
testimony or make affidavit to the enslavement of the arrested one,
“in no trial or hearing under the Act was the testimony of the alleged
fugitive to be admitted in evidence” that he was not the one that his
claimant called him, or that he had been emancipated by the will of a
former owner, or by the purchase of his liberty.
If there be among the laws of any other nation, in any other part and
in any other age of the world, an enactment, a decree, a ukase, so
profoundly wicked, so ingeniously cruel, as this law which the Congress
of the United States passed in 1850,--the very middle of the nineteenth
century,--I beg to be informed of it, for I confess at the close of
this recital I feel as if, in my shame and misery, I should be relieved
for a moment by bad company.
At first it may seem strange that Mr. Clay should have supposed the
people of the Northern States would conform to the requirements
of such a law; would consent that their States should be made the
hunting-grounds, and themselves the bloodhounds of Southern oppressors
in pursuit of their fleeing slaves. And yet was he not justified in
this low opinion of us by the conduct of many of those who were elected
to be representatives of the opinions and wishes of the majority of our
communities? The execrable bill could not have become a law, without
the concurrence of Northern members in both Houses of Congress; for, in
both, the larger number were from the non-slaveholding States. Yet it
was enacted by the votes of twenty-seven of the Senators against only
twelve; and by one hundred and nine of the Representatives opposed by
seventy-five. And many of these recreants to the fundamental principles
of justice and humanity had led Mr. Clay, and the Southern politicians
generally, to expect such votes as they gave by the sentiments they
uttered in the preceding debates.