| OCR Text |
Show 74 holder might bring his slave into a free State, and keep him there as long as he would in transitu. Then we must have laws to enforce these demands: Congress will legislate, and the Supreme Court will rule to put slavery int~ every Northern State. In the beginning of June, 1854, thts same Mr. Curtis, then become a Judge, gave a" charge," in which he made it appear, that to mal\e a speech in Faneuil Hall against kidnapping was a " misdemeanor." Yes, if a Massachusetts minister sees his parishioners kidnapped, and makes a speech in Faneuil Hall against that iniquity, and tells the people that they are slaves of Southern masters, Mr. Justice Curtis says that that man has committed a crime, to be punished by imprisonment for twelve months, and a fine of three hundred dollars! By and by, that charge will be "good common law:" all lawyers will be slavehunters; all judges of the Scroggs family; all court-houses girt with chains; all the newspapers administration and Satanic; all the Trinitarian Doctors of Divinity will take a South-Side view of wickedness in high places ; all the Nothingarian Doctors of Divinity will send back their mothers- for a consideration! And then what becomes of Freedom of Speech, Freedom to \Vorship God? what of Unalienable Rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? They all perish; and the mocking of tyrants rings round the land: " We meant to subdue you," scoffs one; "I said,' We will crush out Humanity,'" laughs forth another. Where, then, is America? It goes where Korah and Dathan and Abiram are said to have gone long ago. The earth will open her mouth and swallow us up; the Justice of God will visit us,- our crime greater than that of Sod om and Gomorrah,-for we shall have committed High Treason against the dearest Rights of Man! He will rain on us wor::;e than fire and brimstone; our name shall rot in the Dead Sea of infamy, and the curses of mankind hang over our memory for ever and ever, world without end ! 75 II. Supp~se we separate. The North may at length :ePl ~orne little manhood; become angry at this continual Insult, and be roused by fear of actual rui 11 ; calculate the value of the Union, and find it not \vorth while any Jonaer to be tied to this offensive partner. See what rnav foll~w in the attempt at dissolution. Look at the Com~arative Military Povver- the men and money- of the North and South. Omitting California and the Territories, the North has fifteen million freemen, or three million men able to do military duty; and also thirty-two hundred million dollars ( $3,200,000,000) ; while the South has fifteen hundred million dollars ( $1,500,000,000), six million five hundred thousand freemen, and three rnilJion five hundred thousand slaves. But the latter are a negative quantity to be subtracted from the whole. So the effective population is three millions, or six hundred thousand men able to bear arms. Such is the comparative pPrsonal and material force of the two. I will not speak of the odds in the Quality of Northern and Southern men, looking now only at the obvious quantitative difference. The contest could not be doubtful or long. The North could dictate the terms of separation, and would probably take two-thirds of the naval and military property of the nation, and all of the Territories. Then would come the question, Where shall be the line of demarcation between Freedom and Slavery? I think the North might fix the Potomac and Ohio as the Northern, and the Mississippi as the Western, limit of Slavery. Depend upon it, we shall not leave more land than these boundaries indicate, to the cause of bondage. Then the Ten Barbary States of America might found a new Empire, with Despotism for their Central Idea; take the name of Braggadocia, Servilia, Violentia, 'Thrasonia, or, in plainer Saxon title, Bullydom; and become as famous in future history as the " Five Cities |
