I would
rather sustain an injury than an insult or dishonor; and I would be
as unwilling to inflict it upon others as I would be to submit to it
myself. I never will do either the one or the other if I know it.
* * * * *
I know that charges have been made and rung in our ears, and reiterated
over and over again, that we have been unfaithful in the execution of
your fugitive bill. Sir, that law is exceedingly odious to any free
people. It deprives us of all the old guarantees of liberty that the
Anglo-Saxon race everywhere have considered sacred--more sacred than
anything else.
* * * * *
Mr. President, the gentleman says, if I understood him, that these
fugitives might be turned over to the authorities of the State from
whence they came. That would be a very poor remedy for a free man in
humble circumstances who was taken under the provisions of this bill in
a summary way, to be carried--where? Where he came from? There is no law
that requires that he should be carried there. Sir, if he is a free man
he may be carried into the market-place anywhere in a slave State; and
what chance has he, a poor, ignorant individual, and a stranger,
of asserting any rights there, even if there were no prejudices or
partialities against him? That would be mere mockery of justice and
nothing else, and the Senator well knows it.
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