A Letter to the Hon. Samuel A. Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill

You pronounce Mr. Crittenden "legal authority of the highest kind." This legal authority understands the sixth section of your law as providing that each commissioner "shall have judicial power and jurisdiction to hear, examine, and decide the case in a summary manner." Now, if a man, having judicial power and jurisdiction to decide controversies between parties adverse to each other, in controversies arising under the Constitution and within the express delegation of judicial power given by that instrument, is not a judge, do tell us who is one. Once more, Sir, Mr. Crittenden says, "The legal authority of every tribunal of exclusive jurisdiction, where no appeal lies, is of necessity conclusive upon every tribunal; and therefore the judgment of the tribunal created by this act is conclusive upon all other tribunals." So your commissioner is not only a judge, but he constitutes a tribunal of exclusive jurisdiction, and his judgment is binding even upon the Supreme Court of the United States. And yet, Sir, you must deny that this omnipotent commissioner is a judge, or you must admit, that, in the mode of his appointment, you have flagrantly violated the Constitution of your country.

It has been most wickedly asserted by our proslavery presses and our proslavery politicians, that the surrender of fugitives from labor and fugitives from justice are similar proceedings. The surrender of a fugitive slave involves two questions, that of identity and that of property; and the law makes the decision of the commissioner on both points final and conclusive upon every State and Federal court in the land. The surrender of a fugitive criminal involves only the question of personal identity. The Governor of the State issues his warrant for the apprehension and delivery of a certain person proved to him to be charged with felony. If the officer arrests the wrong person, he does it at his peril, and a writ of habeas corpus would immediately release the person wrongfully arrested. Again, it is most fraudulently maintained, that, if the wrong person is by the commissioner adjudged a slave, he may sue for his freedom in a Southern court! Should he do so, the exhibition of the commissioner's certificate is by law declared to be conclusive upon all tribunals. But even supposing that a Southern court, in defiance of law, should go behind the certificate, how is a free colored person from the North, working under the lash on a Mississippi plantation, to prove his freedom? How is he to fee a lawyer? How is he to get into court? If once there, where are his witnesses? They are his friends and acquaintances of his own color residing in the North. How are they to be summoned to Mississippi? Should they venture to enter the State, they would be imprisoned, and perhaps sold into slavery; or even if permitted to enter the court-room, their testimony would by law be excluded, against the claims of a white man. How despicably profligate, then, is the assumption of the advocates of your law, that any injustice committed under it would be repaired by Southern courts!

It was not enough, it seems, that the wretched defendant in this momentous issue should be subjected to the jurisdiction of a judge unknown to the Constitution, holding his office by a prohibited tenure, incapable of being impeached, and bribed to decide in favor of the plaintiff by the promise of double fees, but the very trial allowed him must be a burlesque on all the forms and principles of juridical justice. The plaintiff, without notice to the defendant, prepares himself for trial, and when his affidavits or witnesses are all ready, he seizes the unsuspecting victim in the street, and puts him instanter on his defence. Had the wretched man been accused of some atrocious crime, he might have demanded bail, and would have been permitted to go at large to seek for counsel, to look for witnesses, and to prepare for trial at some future day, of which he would have due notice. But no such privilege is allowed a man who is accused of owing service. One of your commissioners has already decided that the law does not permit him to bail the prisoner. The slave power rides in triumph over all the barriers erected by the wisdom of ages for the protection of human rights. The defendant is brought, generally in irons, before your commissioner judge, who is required "to hear and determine the case of the claimant in a summary manner." The law seems not even to imagine the possibility of any defence being made on the part of the defendant. It makes no provision for such a defence, – no assignment of counsel, no summons for witnesses. We shall see presently, that if the plaintiff makes out a primâ facie title, satisfactory to the commission, it is all the law requires. Let me now call your attention to the practical working of your diabolical law. A man named Rose was lately seized at Detroit, and brought before a commissioner as a fugitive slave. I copy from the newspaper report. "Mr. Joy (counsel for defendant) moved a postponement of the trial to a future day, to enable Rose to produce his papers to establish his right to freedom, which papers he had sworn were in Cincinnati. The counsel for the claimant denied that the commissioner had any authority under the law to grant a postponement. The commissioner agreed with the counsel for the plaintiff, that he had no authority to postpone the trial; and he further declared, that, even were the papers by which Rose was manumitted present, he could not under the law receive them in evidence."

Utterly devilish as was this decision, it was sound law. The plaintiff had proved his title satisfactorily, and this being done, the commissioner was bound by the express words of the law to grant the certificate. He had no right to admit rebutting evidence. It was sufficient to prove that the prisoner had been the slave of the claimant's father, and that the claimant was the heir at law of his father. This of itself was satisfactory, and therefore the commissioner had no right to admit in evidence the very deed of manumission granted by the father to the slave. The framers of the law had been as explicit as they dared to be. "Upon satisfactory proof being made by deposition or affidavit, to be taken and certified, &c., or by other satisfactory testimony [of course, in writing, and ex parte], and with proof, also by affidavit, of the identity of the person," &c., the defendant is to be surrendered. Not a hint is given that any testimony may be received to rebut the satisfactory proof given by the plaintiff. You have, moreover, Sir, provided a species of evidence never before heard of in the trial of an issue. By the tenth section, the claimant may go before a judge or court in Texas, and there make proof by affidavit that his slave has escaped. Whereupon, the court or judge is to certify that the proof is satisfactory. A record of this satisfactory proof, together with a description of the fugitive, is to be made, and a certified transcript of this record, "being exhibited to any judge, commissioner, or other officer authorized," &c., "shall be held and taken to be full and conclusive evidence of the fact of escape, and that the service or labor of the person escaping is due to the party in such record mentioned." Here all defence is taken from the defendant. Should he summon a host of witnesses to prove his freedom, not one could be heard; should he offer a bill of sale from the claimant to another, it could not be received; should he produce a deed of manumission, acknowledged and certified in a Southern court, it would be waste paper. And thus a man's freedom is to be sacrificed on an affidavit made a thousand miles off. What, Sir, would you think of a law that would authorize the seizure and sale of your property to satisfy a debt which any man in California might think proper to swear, before a Californian judge, was due from you to him?

Such, Sir, is the trial which you, the representative of Boston, a descendant of the Pilgrims, and "a gentleman of property and standing," have accorded to the poor and oppressed. Did the Constitution require such a prostitution of justice, such an outrage of humanity, at your hands? I need not be told that some of your commissioners have not construed your law as strictly as did the Detroit functionary. Thanks to the force of public opinion, and to the zeal of some benevolent lawyers, whose hearts were not padded with cotton, in some instances defendants have been permitted to call witnesses in their behalf; and some regard has been paid to the ordinary principles of justice. But in all such instances, the spirit of the law and the intentions of its framers have been frustrated.

And now let us listen to your "reason" for justifying all the atrocities and abominations of your law. You gravely tell us, "The entire population of the North has acquiesced in the law of 1793, without thinking itself exposed to the charge of barbarity, and I have only to say, that I do not think the charge any more just now." Certainly, Sir, the young colonial judge could not have given a reason less logical or satisfactory. You must be an inattentive observer of passing events, if you are ignorant that the law of 1793 has again and again been denounced as iniquitous, that some of the States have prohibited their officers from assisting in its execution, that numberless petitions have been presented to Congress for its repeal, and that you yourself, instead of acquiescing in it, solemnly declared it to be the duty of Congress so far to alter the law, as to grant the alleged fugitive a trial by jury. Yet the law of 1793, wicked as it was, was justice and mercy compared with yours. The trials under that were almost invariably before judges of the State courts, not appointed like your commissioners for the vile and only purpose of reducing their fellow-men to bondage. There judges were not confined to ex parte evidence, were not compelled to receive "as full and conclusive" affidavits made in distant States, and by unknown persons. For the most part, they honestly endeavoured, by a patient investigation according to the ordinary rules of evidence, and by holding the plaintiff to strict legal proof, to supply the want of a jury.

David Paul Brown, Esq., of Philadelphia, in a letter of last November, affirms that for the last thirty years he has been engaged as counsel in almost every important fugitive case brought before the judges and courts of Philadelphia, and he tells us, "thanks to those upright and impartial and independent judges by whom the rights of the parties were finally determined," he knows of no instance in which a colored person was, in his opinion, wrongfully surrendered. But he adds, "I have known HUNDREDS who have been illegally and unjustly claimed." This experienced lawyer, commenting on your law, justly says it allows "ex parte testimony to be received against the alleged fugitive, which, upon no principle known to the common law, could be received upon the claim to a horse or a dog." About four weeks after the date of this letter, Mr. Brown was called to defend an alleged fugitive "illegally and unjustly claimed," not before one of the "upright and impartial and independent" Pennsylvania judges, but before one of your ten-dollar slave-catching judges. I beg you to mark the result.

On the 21st of December, a colored man was arrested in the street in Philadelphia, without warrant, and accused of stealing chickens. He was thrust into a carriage, driven to the State-House, carried into an upper room, and handcuffed. In this state he was detained till a commissioner arrived. The name of this executor of your law is worthy of remembrance. Edward D. Ingraham ought to be as much endeared to slave-catchers, as Judge Jeffries was to James the Second.

By some means, the arrest became known, and counsel appeared for the prisoner. Your commissioner was informed that the prisoner had only been seized an hour and a half before, and had not heard the charge against him; that his counsel had had no time to learn the plaintiff's case, nor to prepare for the defence; that there were persons residing at a distance, some in New Jersey and some in Wilmington, who would be important witnesses in his behalf. On these grounds, a motion was made for a continuance. And what, Sir, do you suppose was the reply made by the slave-catching judge to this motion? "The hearing is to be a summary one: let it proceed." No doubt you fully participate in Mr. Webster's indignation against Austrian barbarity; but see no barbarity in this accursed proceeding against a colored American. The hearing did proceed, and James S. Price, on behalf of the plaintiff, swore that the prisoner was Emery Rice, the man claimed, but knew nothing further about his being a slave, except that he had seen him riding the claimant's horse. Had heard it said the prisoner was a slave. This was the amount of the testimony on behalf of the claimant. Any honest jury, nay, any honest judge, would instantly have decided in favor of the prisoner. Not so Mr. Edward D. Ingraham. The counsel for the defendant asked again for a postponement, and founded the motion on the oath of the defendant, that he could procure six persons, naming them, to testify to his freedom. A delay of ONE HOUR was asked for. This was refused, and the judge(!) sent for a certificate to sign. During the delay thus occasioned, one of the six persons named by the defendant appeared, and swore that he had known the prisoner all his life. That he was not Emery Rice, but Adam Gibson; that he was a freeman, having been manumitted by the will of his late master. Mr. Brown produced a copy of the will of the late master, and it so far confirmed the testimony of the witness. Another person in the crowd now came forward, and swore that he also knew the prisoner, and that he was a free person, and that he was Adam Gibson. But all was in vain. The commissioner signed the certificate, and, with an obtuseness of intellect which marked him as a fit subject for a commission of lunacy, declared, "He had no doubt of the identity of the prisoner with the slave Emery Rice, and that all other proceedings must be before the courts of Maryland, whither he would send him."1 And so the prisoner, without seeing his wife and children, whom he had that morning parted from unsuspicious of danger and unconscious of crime, was hurried off at the expense of our glorious model republic, under an escort of officers, who delivered him, not to the courts of Maryland, but to Mr. William S. Knight, the reputed owner. But Mr. Knight told the officers, "You have brought me a wrong man; this is not Emery Rice; this man is no slave of mine." And so Adam Gibson returned to Philadelphia, and is now a living illustration of the abominable iniquity of one of the most accursed laws to be found in the statute-book of any civilized nation.

You do not think your law more barbarous than that of 1793. Let me further enlighten you. Judge McLean of the Supreme Court, in his opinion delivered last May in the case of Norris v. Newton et al., remarks, – "In regard to the arrest of fugitives from labor, the law [act of 1793] does not impose any active duties on our citizens generally"; and he argues in defence of the law, that "it gives no one a just right to complain; he has only to refrain from an express violation of the law." In other words, the law only required individuals to be passive spectators of a horrible outrage, and did not compel them to be active participators in other men's villany. Now, what says your law? Why, that every commissioner may appoint as many official slave-catchers as he pleases, and that each of these menials may "summon and call to their aid the by-standers or posse comitatus of the proper county, when necessary to insure a faithful observance of the clause of the Constitution referred to in conformity with the provisions of this act, AND ALL GOOD CITIZENS ARE HEREBY COMMANDED TO AID AND ASSIST in the prompt and efficient execution of this law, whenever their services may be required." And what is the fate you have provided for the "good citizen," who, believing slavery to be sinful, cannot, in the fear of God, "aid and assist" in making a fellow-man a slave? Any person "who shall aid, abet, or assist" the fugitive "directly or indirectly" (cunning words) to escape from such claimant, as, for instance, refusing to join in a slave-hunt when required, shall be fined not exceeding $1,000, be imprisoned six months, and pay the claimant $1,000. I hope, Sir, you are now able to perceive that your law has a preëminence in barbarity over its predecessor. And now, Sir, please to recollect, that party discipline, aided by the influence of Messrs. Webster and Clay, and the factory and cotton interest of Boston and New York, could not procure for this atrocious law the votes of one half the members of the House of Representatives. Of two hundred and thirty-two members, only one hundred and nine dared to place their names on an enduring and shameful record, while many basely deserted their seats, fearing alike to vote either for or against it. You, Sir, following Mr. Webster's advice, "conquered your prejudices," and in company with two more Northern Whigs, one of them a native of Virginia, cast your vote for this bill of abominations. But, although you voted for the law, you do not wish your constituents to suppose you approved of it. "It will not, I trust, be inferred from any thing I have said, that I consider the law which has passed unexceptionable. There are amendments which I strongly desire to be introduced into it." What are the exceptionable features of the law, what are the amendments you desire, you refrain from specifying. But you tell us that you would have labored for these amendments "had it been possible, but every body knows that it was impracticable." You allude to the previous question, which prevented both discussion and amendments. But why, then, did you vote for an objectionable bill which could not be amended? Here, again, we have one of your unfortunate reasons. "I deem conformity to the design of the Constitution more important than the objectionable details of the bill." So, by your own confession, had there been no previous question, you would have swallowed the bill with all its objectionable details, out of reverence for the design of the Constitution, although that design neither embraced nor required a single one of those details. Did you, Sir, vote against the previous question? On this point you are silent, and the minutes afford no information; but if you did, your vote was a most remarkable aberration from your proslavery course in Congress. After the previous question had been seconded, it was moved to lay the bill on the table. Had this motion been carried, you might have introduced another bill, omitting the "objectionable details," but you voted with the slaveholders. The slaveholders then moved that the bill be read a third time. Had this been lost, there would have been a chance of correcting the "objectionable details." Again you voted with the slaveholders, and a third time, also, on the main question.

I will now, Sir, call your attention to the disastrous influence which your law has exerted on the moral sense of the community. Says Coleridge, "To dogmatize a crime, that is, to teach it as a doctrine, is itself a crime." Of this crime of dogmatizing crime, Mr. Webster, and most of our cotton politicians, and, alas! many of our fashionable, genteel divines, are guilty; nor are you innocent, Sir, who in your law require "GOOD citizens" to aid in hunting and enslaving their fellow-men.

In former years, and before Mr. Webster had undergone his metamorphosis, he thus, in a speech at New York, expressed himself in regard to the antislavery agitation at the North. "It [slavery] has arrested the religious feeling of the country; it has taken strong hold of the consciences of men. He is a rash man indeed, little conversant with human nature, and especially has he a very erroneous estimate of the character of the people of this country, who supposes that a feeling of this kind is to be trifled with or despised." This gentleman has become the rash man shadowed forth in his speech, and is trifling with and despising the religious feeling of the North. In his street speech in Boston, in favor of slave-hunting, he avowed that he was well aware that the return of fugitives "is a topic that must excite prejudices," and that the question for Massachusetts to decide was, "whether she will conquer her own prejudice." In his letter to the citizens of Newburyport, he sneeringly alludes to the "cry that there is a rule for the government of public men and private men which is superior to the Constitution," and he scornfully intimates that Mr. Horace Mann, who had objected to your law as wicked, would do well "to appeal at once, as others do, to that high authority which sits enthroned above the Constitution and the laws"; and he gives an extract from a nameless English correspondent, in which the writer remarks, "Religion is an excellent thing except in politics," a maxim exceedingly palatable to very many of our politicians. Aware that the impiety of this sentiment was not exactly suited to the meridian of Massachusetts, he says his friend undoubtedly meant "a fantastical notion of religion." Of course, he regards the religious prejudice against hunting and enslaving men as springing from a fantastic notion of religion. Yet, with a strange fatuity, he confesses that "the teaching of Christ and his Apostles is a sure guide to duty in politics, as in any other concern of life," utterly oblivious of the fact, that the "higher law," which he ridicules, was proclaimed in that very teaching. Christ taught, "Fear not them [magistrates] who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." What taught the Apostles? "We must obey God, rather than man." Such teaching it was, that gave birth to "the noble army of martyrs," and this very teaching will induce multitudes of Christians at the present day to hazard fines and imprisonment rather than obey the wicked injunctions of your law. It was this same teaching which, on the publication of your law, induced numerous ministers of Jesus Christ, and various ecclesiastical assemblies, to denounce it as wicked, and obedience to it as rebellion against God. This expression of religious sentiment alarmed both our politicians and our merchants. How could the one expect Southern votes, or the other Southern trade, if the religious people at the North refused to catch slaves? Hence arose a mighty outcry against the blending of religion with politics, and most fearful were the anathemas against the parsons who desecrated the pulpit by preaching politics, that is, preaching that people ought to obey God rather than the Fugitive Slave Act. Such men were, in the language of one of the New York commercial journals, "clerical preachers of rebellion," and their congregations were exhorted to "leave them to naked walls." But the leaven was at work, and an antidote was greatly wanted. Supply of course follows demand, and forthwith there was a sudden advent of cotton clergyman, preaching against rebellion, and cunningly confounding a conscientious, passive disobedience with forcible resistance. Their sermons, in which virtually

"The image of God was accounted as base,And the image of Cæsar set up in its place,"

were received with mighty applause by the very men who had been striving to save the pulpit from all contaminating contact with politics, and the reverend preachers of cotton politics were elevated into patriots, and their disquisitions against the "higher law" were scattered on the wings of the commercial press broadcast over the land.2 The theology which holds that the allegiance we owe to civil government binds the conscience to obedience to its mandates, is the same with which Shakspeare's assassin quieted his scruples when acting under the royal command, – "If a king bid a man be a villain, he is bound by the indenture of his oath to be one."

It is amusing to observe with what awful reverence our merchants and brokers regard the sanctity of human law, when it commands them to catch slaves; a reverence not always felt by them for the statute of usury when the money market is tight.

A vast deal of nonsense and impiety has been recently thrown upon the public in relation to the "higher law," by men who had political and pecuniary interests depending on the good-will of the slaveholders. The whole subject is perfectly simple and intelligible, and has been intentionally misrepresented and mystified.