Page:Speech of John Hossack.djvu/7

Rh I appeal from the bloody slaveholding statute to the liberty-loving Constitution. While these fathers lived, State after State, in carrying out the spirit of the Constitution, put an end to the dreadful system. The great Washington, in his last will and testament, carried out the spirit of the Constitution.

But, sir, the law under which you may sentence me violates both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. I have a word to say upon the articles of the Constitution which it is claimed the Fugitive Slave Law is designed to carry out.

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on the claim of the party to whom such service or labor is due."

That is the provision that is claimed transforms the Government into a monster of iniquity. I have read, over and over, that article, interpreted by all laws of language known to a plain man. How these three or four lines can transform this Government, ordained to secure justice, into a mean tool to aid the plunderers of cradles, the destroyers of home, the ravishers of women, and the oppressors of men, to carry on their hellish work—how it can do this thing, I cannot see. That article binds the several States separately not to pass a certain law, but where in it do we find a Fugitive Slave Law? Where do you find a Commissioner? Where do you find that the Government is to hunt up and return, at its own expense, a slave that flees from his cruel and bloody master? Where in those lines is the authority to compel me to be a partaker in the crimes of the man-stealer? The General Government is not once mentioned; but the States in their separate sovereignties are named. But, Sir, this article expressly provides that the party making the claim shall have owed him service or labor due from the party claimed. If Jim Gray owed service, or labor, or money, to Phillips, I am the last man in the world to raise my voice or hand to prevent Phillips, or any man, from obtaining his dues. What I would grant to the devil himself, I would not withhold even from the slaveholder—his due. Jim Gray claims that he does not owe Phillips a day's work or a dollar of money. Phillips claims that he owes him every day's work that has