Page:The Barbarism of Slavery.djvu/46



Bolivar, on the road leading from Bolivar to Whitesville. I am ready at all timos to catch runaway negroes.

“March 2, 1853, — West-Tennessee Democrat."

The blood-hound was known in early Scottish history; it was once vindictively put upon the trail of Robert Bruce, and in barbarous days, by a cruel license of war, it was directed against the marauders of the Scottish border; but more than a century has passed since the last survivor of the race, kept as a curiosity, was fed on meal in Ettrick Forest. The blood-hound was employed by Spain, against the natives of this continent, and the eloquence of Chatham never touched a truer chord than when, gathering force from the condemnation of this brutality, he poured his thunder upon the kindred brutality of the scalpingknife, adopted as an instrument of war by a nation professing civilization. Tardily introduced into our Republic, some time after the Missouri Compromise, when Slavery became a political passion and Slave-masters began to throw aside all disguise, the blood-hound has become the representative of our Barbarism in one of its worst forms, when engaged in the pursuit of a fellowman who is asserting his inborn title to himself; and this brute is, indeed, typical of the whole brutal leash of Slave-hunters, who, whether at home on Slave-soil, under the name of Slavecatchers, and kidnappers, or at a distance, under politer names, insult Human Nature by the enforcement of this Barbarism.

(3.) From this dreary picture of Slave-masters with their slaves and their triumvirate of vulgar instruments, I pass to another more dreary still, and more completely exposing the influence of Slavery; I mean the relations of Slave-masters with each other, also with Society and Government, or, in other words, the Character of Slave-masters, as displayed in the general relations of life. And here I need your indulgence. Not in triumph or in taunt do I approach this branch of the subject. Yielding only to the irresistible exigency of the discussion and in direct response to the assumptions on this floor, especially by the Senator from Virginia, [,] I shall proceed. If I touch Slavery to the quick, and enable Slave-masters to see themselves as others see them, I shall do nothing beyond the strictest line of duty in this debate.

One of the choicest passages of the master Italian poet, Dante,