| OCR Text |
Show 34 'l'IIE Fuon·rvE pleasure and interest. Wealthy and influential gentlemen in our commercial cities, out of compliment to southern electors, became amateur huntsmen, and. in New York and Boston the cl1nsc was pursued with all the zeal and apparent delight that could have been expected in Guinea or Virginia. Slave·catclting was the test, at once, of patriotism and gentility, while sympathy for the wretched fugitive was the mark of vulgar fanaticism. 'l'hc north was humbled in the dust, by the action of her own rcm·cant sons. Every "good citizen" found himself, for the first time in tho history of mankind, a slave-catcher by law. Every official, appointed by a slave-catching judge, was in· vested with the authority of a High Shcrifr; being empowered to call out the posse comilalus, and compel the neighbors to join in a slave chase. IV ell, indeed, might the slaveholders rejoice and make merry;well, indeed, in the insolence of triumph, might they command the people of the 110rth to l>old their tongues about "the peculiar institution,}) under pain of their sore displeasure. But amid this slaver.v jubilee, a woman's heart was swelling and heaving with indignant sorrow at the outrages offered to God and man by the fugitive SLAVE AcT. 35 law. Her pent up emotions struggled for utterance, and at last, as if moved by ~omc mighty inspiration, and in all the fervor of Christian love, she put fo rth a book which ancstc'l the attention of the WORLD. A miracle of authorship, tl1is book attained, within twelve months, a. circulation without a parallel in the history of printing. In that brief space, about two millions of volumes proclalrncd, in the languages of civilization, the wrongs of the slave nnd the atrocities of the AMEHlCAN FL"Gl'l'IVE LAW. rJ'hc gaze of mankind is now turned upon the slavcholcJcrs and their northern auxiliaries, hoth clerical and by. 'l'hc subjects of E urop!.!a.n despotisms console themselves with the grateful conviction, that however harsh may be their own governments, they make no approach to the baseness or to the cruelty and tyranny of the "peculiar institution" of the Model Republic:'· • A lat.c Arnc1·ican tt·:lve\lcr, in Germany, iuvited to nn evening party at the house of ~~ Pt·ofcssor, attempted to complimcut the comp: my by t>x pt·c~si ug ilis iml ig:nation at the oppre~sion which "the dear old Oermrm fatht"dand" suffc1'ed at the lmuds of its J·uler!-. The Am(wican's proffcncd sympathy wn~ coldly received. "We ndmit," was the rPply, "that there i3 much wrong here, but we do not ndrnit the right of yow· cotmlry to rebuke it. 'l'hcr·c is n gystcm now wi1h you, worse than nnything which we lmow of t.yr:mny--yom· F:I •• wv.n,·. 1 • is n disf.(r·ncc nnd Olot ou your free govcrnmcut and on n Christiau Stttt.e. We have nothing iu Russia or IIungary which is so dcgt·u.ding, |
