Page:The Barbarism of Slavery - Sumner - 1863.pdf/54

 48 garden-seeds,

New- York, peddling

was

forcibly expelled

from

the State. In Georgia, a merchant's clerk, Irishman by birth, who simply asked the settlement of a just debt, was cast into prison, robbed of his pocket-book, containing nearly one hundred

and barely escaped with his life. In South-Carolina, a stone-cutter, Irishman by birth, was stripped naked, and then, amidst cries of " Brand him !" " Burn -him !" " Spike him to death !" scourged so that blood came at every stroke, while tar was poured upon his lacerated flesh. These atrocities, calculated, according to the words of a poet of subtle beauty, to "make a holiday in hell," were all ordained, by Vigilance Committees, or by that busiest magistrate, Judge Lynch, inspired by the dollars,

demon

of Slavery. "

He

let

How

them

shall

and

loose,

we

yield

cried,

Halloo

I

him honor due ?"

In perfect shamelessness, and as if to blazon this fiendish spirit, we have had, this winter, in a leading newspaper of "Virginia, an article, proposing to give twenty-five dollars each for the heads of citizens, mostly members of Congress, known to be against Slavery, and $50,000 for the head of William H. Seward. And in still another paper of Virginia, we find a proposition to raise $10,000 to be given for the kidnapping and delivery of a venerable citizen, Joshua R. Giddings, at Richmond, " or $5000 for the production of his head." These are fresh inmeeting At a of Slave-masters stances, but they are not alone.

Governor was recommended to issue a $5000 as a reward for the apprehension

in Georgia, in 1835, the

proclamation, offering

of

either

of ten persons

named

in the resolution, citizens of

New-

York and Massachusetts, and one a subject of Great Britain not one of whom it was pretended had ever set foot on the soil of Georgia. The Milledgeville Federal Union, a newspaper of Georgia, in 1836, contained an offer of $10,000 for kidnapping Committee a clergyman residing in the city of New- York.

A

of Vigilance of Louisiana, in

1835, offered, in the

Louisiana

Journal, $50,000 to any person who would deliver into their hands Arthur Tappan, a merchant of New-York and during the same year a public meeting in Alabama, with a person en;

titled "

$50,000

Honorable

" in

the chair, offered a similar reward of

for the apprehension of the

same Arthur Tappan, and