krebscycle

Theodore Parker on the Fugitive Slave Act:

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 Sptague 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.