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DECEMBER, 1860.
DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.
379
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unjust law never procured its repeal. The actual method, by which communities have gotten rid of unrighteous laws, has been by protesting against them, disobeying them, and thus coming into conflict with the government at the bar of public opinion, the common moral sense of mankind, which is the great umpire on earth, to whom majorities and monarchs must ultimately bow. 'First, the people have thrown unjust laws aside, and then the Legislature have abrogated them because they were thrown aside. First, the law has perished because of its injustice, and then been buried by statute because it was dead.'

What would be the effect on those who used 'all their personal and official influence' to procure the enactment and enforce obedience to this Fugitive Slave Bill ; what, I ask, would be the effect on them, if it should be known that we, the people of Central New York, who have from the first protested to loudly against it, were, nevertheless, everywhere consenting to obey it in all its provisions? Would they not point to the fact, as a signal evidence of the eminent success of their 'peace measures.' If the people of the North will only become 'the settlers,' 'the terriers,' 'the blood hounds,' of the Southern men hunters, they will not care how much we bark and howl about the decree that would make us such dogs. But when we turn upon them and drive them from the field, they are made to know that we will not be their creatures, and moreover, that they cannot pursue their game across our domains, which are consecrated to liberty and humanity.

Once more, it is urged by the abettors of this great iniquity, that we are very presumptuous in setting up our individual opinions, in opposition to the enlightened wisdom of the greatest statesmen of the country, the majority of our legislators and of their constituents. Now, this is not stating the case fairly. The Fugitive Slave Law is not an offence to only here and there a few individuals. Millions see and acknowledge it to be most flagrantly unjust and cruel. The minority in Congress opposed to its enactment was a very large one, and a large part of the majority, both in and out of Congress, execrate the law, at the same time that they insist upon obedience to it. Indeed, it would be hard to find a person, not steeped in the sin of slaveholding from his birth, who would undertake to show the justice, much less the mercifulness, of this outrageous edict.

The question, then, before the country, is, whether a law, which a vast majority allow to be a wicked one, which even the most unscrupulous adherents of Mr. Webster at first recoiled from with horror -- a law which outrages all the natural, indefeasible rights of those against whom it is directed, and does violence o every good feeling of those who are called upon to execute it -- the question is whether such a law ought to be obeyed, merely because by legislative management a majority of the members of Congress was obtained for it? If the will of the majority be absolute -- if there be no appeal from it -- if there be no natural, eternal principles of right and wrong, upon which we may fall back in such an emergency, we see not how our own liberties are more secure under our form of government, than they would be under a monarchy or even a despotism. The way in which the supporters of this law have flouted at conscience, and the moral sense of mankind, shows how little fitted they are to help forward our great experiment of self-government.

Men differ much on minor questions of morals, and there is room for honest differences. But the glorious principles announced in the Declaration of American Independence were self-evident to all men. And wherever, in our Northern States, the people should be brought to witness an attempt to take from a man his liberty, and reduce him to the condition of a domesticated brute,  thousand voices would cry, shame upon the deed, for every one, that would attempt to justify it. Tell us not, then, that we are setting up
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our individual consciences against the conscience of the nation. A vast majority abhor this law, though, there may be a majority that, for certain political reasons, have concluded it is expedient to sustain the law, or pretend to sustain it, bad as it is. We have the heart of our nation with us, though the head may be against us.

The followers of the expedient rather than the right would fain make it appear that our opposition to this enactment tends to the subversion of law. We know better, and so do they. The only claim which an enactment of our State or National government can have to our respect and obedience, is its justice.-- If it be unjust, only to our property, it if subject us only to pecuniary loss or to personal inconvenience, we may, for the sake of peace, we ought to submit to it. But when it requires us, as this Fugitive Slave Bill does, to inflict the greatest injury upon others, we are not at liberty to obey. We are bound by our obligations to God and man to set the law at naught -- to prevent its execution. 'Disobedience to unjust laws, so far from subverting, tends directly to establish Law, by honoring the only true source of its claims. The only real upholder of Law is he who strenuously opposes all unjust enactments. That man who blindly of passively obeys all the behests of human rulers, right or wrong, merciful or cruel, is not the friend of Law, but of arbitrary rule, of tyranny.'

The citizens of Syracuse and Onondaga county did not, on the first of October, violate Law; they set at naught an unrighteous, cruel edict ; they trampled upon tyranny. -- Who doubts, who does not know, that if poor Jerry had been arrested for any crime, or only a misdemeanor -- for the violation of property or the disturbance of the peace -- who does not know that, if that had been the case, all the people would have said, Amen! so let it be! They would not have interfered in his behalf, even if, in his struggles against the executive officers, he brought upon himself a harsher treatment than his offence seemed to deserve.

But when the people saw a man dragged through the streets in a cart -- chained and held down by four or five others, who had piled themselves upon him ; when they saw him handled by the officers as if he were the worst of felons ; and learned that it was only because he had assumed to be what God made him to be -- a man, and not a slave ; when this came to be known throughout the streets, there was a mighty throbbing of the public heart -- an almost unanimous uprising against the outrage. There was little concert of action, except that to which a common humanity impelled the people. Indignation flashed from every eye. Abhorrence of the Fugitive Slave Bill poured in burning words from every tongue. The very stones cried out. Persons, who never before had been known to manifest the least interest in the cause of our enslaved countrymen, were loud in their cries of shame! shame! Democrats, as well as Republicans, yielded that day to the impulse of humanity, and joined with the Abolitionists in denouncing the deed.

Quickened, roused, urged on by this almost universal denunciation of the outrage upon freedom, some men, more ardent, less patient or cautious than the rest, broke through the partitions between the victim and his liberty, struck off the chains that bound him, and gave him a 'God-speed' to that country, where men-hunters dared not pursue him. Then such a shout of gladness rose upon the air as never made this welkin ring before. If they were sinful, than there were few if any saints in all our town that night. If that wee treason, there were then few patriots here.

And, fellow-citizens, truth obliges us to confess, and we are so obdurate that we do confess without shame, that we have not yet repented of that transgression. Nay, we glory in it. We have given thanks for all attempts that have been made, in other parts of our country, to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act ; and have rejoiced with joy unmeasured at every such attempt that has been success-
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ful. On this day, the ninth anniversary of our triumph over injustice and cruelty, we solemnly declare that, so far as in us lies, that accursed enactment of our debauched General Government never shall be enforced in Central New York, nor in any other part of our State or Nation. And from this notorious spot, on this sacred day, we call upon our countrymen, throughout the free States, to unite with one accord to prevent the Fugitive Slave Act from ever being anywhere treated, or regarded, or spoken of, as the Law of the land; and to withhold their votes from any candidate of either party, for any office, who will give his 'personal or official influence' to enforce obedience to this atrocious enactment.

LETTER FROM CHARLES SUMNER

BOSTON, Sept. 9th, 1860

MY DEAR SIR :-- You know well how much I sympathize with you personally, and also how much I detest the Fugitive Slave bill, as a flagrant violation of the Constitution, and of the most cherished human rights -- as shocking to Christian sentiments, as insulting to humanity, and as impudent in all its pretensions. Of course, I agree with you that such an enactment, having no sanction in the Constitution, in Christianity, or in reason, ought not to be allowed to remain on the statute book; and meanwhile, I trust that the honorable, freedom-loving, peaceful, good and law-abiding citizens, acting in the name of a violated Constitution, and for the sake of law, will see that this infamous counterfeit is made a dead letter. And I am happy to believe that all this can be accomplished by an aroused Public Opinion, which, without violence of any kind, shall surround every 'person' who treads our soil with all the safeguards of the citizen, and shall teach the slave-hunter, whenever he shows himself, that he must expect from Northern men no sympathy or support in his barbarous pursuit.

At your proposed meeting, which it will not be in my power to attend, I trust that a just hatred of slavery in all its pretensions will be subjected to that temperate judgment which knows how to keep a sacred animosity within the limits of the Constitution and the law.

Accept my thanks for the invitation with which you have honored me, and believe me, with much personal regard and constant sympathy, Sincerely yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

The Rev. S. J. MAY.

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KIDNAPPING IN NEW YORK CITY.-- A curious fugitive slave case has just come to light in this city. John Thomas, a colored man, recently owned by a Mr. Winter of Louisville, Ky., was sent by his master to an agent in Evansville, Ind., by whom he was shipped as a steward on a boat plying up and down the Ohio, his wages inuring to the benefit of Winter. Joh  Thomas, tiring of his task, betook himself to Canada, and thence came to New York, where he engaged with Mr. Vail, in Broadway, as a porter, serving him for some months. On Monday night, by some unexplained means, John Thomas was taken to the Grand Jury room in Chambers street, by some unknown personage. He managed to let Mr. Vail know his whereabouts, and on Tuesday that gentleman saw him there in the custody of some one, who exhibited a power of attorney from Winter to recover and return the fugacious John Thomas. Mr. Vail on Tuesday got a writ of habeas corpus, which Marshal Rynders yesterday responded to by producing in court the body of a John Thomas, colored man. This John Thomas, however, was another person, who had been in jail as a witness in a murder case since March last. The Judge decided that the writ was satisfied. Meanwhile Mr. Winter's John Thomas is probably far on his way to Louisville. But the fact remains that a man has been kidnapped in the streets of New York, confined in a U. S. court-room, and carried out of the State without the knowledge or connivance of U.S. Marshals, Deputies, commissioners, District Attorneys, &c.-- Tribune.