I have lived for the last month--and I think that every man in Massachusetts capable of the sentiment of patriotism must have had ...a similar experience--with the sense of having suffered a vast and indefinite loss. I did not know at first what ailed me. At last it occurred to me that what I had lost was a country. I had never respected the government near to which I lived, but I had foolishly thought that I might manage to live here, minding my private affairs, and forget it. For my part, my old and worthiest pursuits have lost I cannot say how much of their attraction, and I feel that my investment in life here is worth many per cent less since Massachusetts last deliberately sent back an innocent man, Anthony Burns, to slavery. I dwelt before, perhaps, in the illusion that my life passed somewhere only between heaven and hell, but now I cannot persuade myself that I do not dwell wholly within hell. The site of that political organization called Massachusetts is to me morally covered with volcanic scoriƦ and cinders, such as Milton describes in the infernal regions. If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I hear a good deal said about trampling this law under foot. Why, one need not go out of his way to do that. This law rises not to... the level of the head or the reason; its natural habitat is in the dirt. It was born and bred, and has its life, only in the dust and mire, on a level with the feet; and he who walks with freedom, and does not with Hindoo mercy avoid treading on every venomous reptile, will inevitably tread on it, and so trample it under foot,--and Webster, its maker, with it, like the dirt-bug and its ball.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Massachusetts sat waiting Mr. Loring's decision.... It was really the trial of Massachusetts. Every moment that she hesitated to s...et this man free, every moment that she now hesitates to atone for her crime, she is convicted. The commissioner on her case is God; not Edward G. God, but simply God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Much has been said about American slavery, but I think that we do not even yet realize what slavery is. If I were seriously to pro...pose to Congress to make mankind into sausages, I have no doubt that most of the members would smile at my proposition, and if any believed me to be in earnest, they would think that I proposed something much worse than Congress had ever done. But if any of them will tell me that to make a man into a sausage would be much worse--would be any worse--than to make him into a slave,--than it was to enact the Fugitive Slave Law,--I will accuse him of foolishness, of intellectual incapacity, of making a distinction without a difference. The one is just as sensible a proposition as the other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Three years ago, also, just a week after the authorities of Boston assembled to carry back a perfectly innocent man, and one whom ...they knew to be innocent, into slavery, the inhabitants of Concord caused the bells to be rung and the cannons to be fired, to celebrate their liberty,--and the courage and love of liberty of their ancestors who fought at the bridge. As if those three millions had fought for the right to be free themselves, but to hold in slavery three million others. Nowadays, men wear a fool's cap, and call it a liberty-cap. I do not know but there are some who, if they were tied to a whipping-post, and could but get one hand free, would use it to ring the bells and fire the cannons to celebrate their liberty. So some of my townsmen took the liberty to ring and fire. That was the extent of their freedom; and when the sound of the bells died away, their liberty died away also; when the powder was all expended, their liberty went off with the smoke. The joke could be no broader if the inmates of the prisons were used to subscribe for all the powder to be used in such salutes, and hire the jailers to do the firing and ringing for them, while they enjoyed it through the grating.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What should concern Massachusetts is not the Nebraska Bill, nor the Fugitive Slave Bill, but her own slaveholding and servility. L...et the State dissolve her union with the slaveholder.... Let each inhabitant of the State dissolve his union with her, as long as she delays to do her duty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »