Page:The Barbarism of Slavery - Sumner - 1863.pdf/56

 50 Slave States. In Boston, Garrison, pleading for the Slave, was dragged through the streets with a halter about his neck and in Illinois Lovejoy, also pleading for the Slave, was ferociously murdered. The former yet lives to speak for himself, while

the latter lives in his eloquent brother, the Eepresentative from Illinois in the other

House. Thus does Slavery show

its

natural

influence even at a distance.

Nor of

in the Slave States is this spirit confined to the outbreaks

mere lawlessness.

ations except in its

Too strong for restraint, it finds no limitown barbarous will. The Government be-

does its bidding. Here again might dwell on the degradation of the Post-Office, when its official head consented that, for the I might sake of Slavery, the mails themselves should be rifled. dwell also on the cruel persecution of Free Persons of color who in the Slave States generally, and even here in the District of Columbia, are not allowed to testify where a white man is in question, and who now in several States are menaced by legislative act with the alternative of expulsion from their homes or of reduction to Slavery. But I pass at once to two illustrative

comes

its tool,

and in

official acts

the instances are numerous.

I

transactions, which, as a son of Massachusetts, I can not forget. 1.

The

first relates

to a citizen of purest

life

and perfect

in-

whose name is destined to fill a conspicuous place in the Born in Massahistory of Freedom, William Lloyd Garrison. chusetts, bred to the same profession with Benjamin Franklin, and like his great predecessor becoming an editor, he saw with instinctive clearness the wrong of Slavery, and at a period when the ardors of the Missouri Question had given way to indifference throughout the North, he stepped forward to denounce it. The jail at Baltimore, where he then resided, was his earliest reward. Afterward, January 1st, 1831, he published the first tegrity,

number of the

Liberator, inscribing for his

of Christian philanthropy,

"My

country

motto an utterance is

the world,

my

countrymen are all mankind," and declaring in the nice of surrounding apathy " I am in earnest. I will not equivocate, I In this will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." proposing Slave, for the labors sublime spirit he commenced his no intervention by Congress in the States, and on well-consid:

ered principle avoiding

all

appeals

to.

the

bondmen

themselves.

sSuch was his simple and thoroughly constitutional position,