Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/218

206 men were worthy of their meat. In jail, Mr Sims was treated with great severity; not allowed to see his relatives, not even his mother. It is said that he was tortured every day with a certain number of stripes on his naked back; that his master once offered to remit part of the cruelty, if he would ask pardon for running away. The man refused, and took the added blows. One day, the jail-doctor told the master that Sims was too ill to bear more stripes. The master said, "Damn him! give him the lashes, if he dies;"—and the lashes fell. Be not troubled at that; a slave is only a "chattel personal." Those blows were laid on by the speakers of the Union meeting; it was only "to save the Union." I have seen a clerical certificate, setting forth that the "owner" of Mr Sims was an "excellent Christian," and "uncommonly pious." When a clergyman would send back his own mother, such conduct is sacramental in a layman.

When Thomas Sims was unlawfully seized, and detained in custody against the law, the governor of Massachusetts was in Boston; the legislature was in session. It seems to me it was their duty to protect the man, and enforce the laws of the State; but they did no such thing.

As that failed, it seems to me that the next thing was for the public to come together in a vast multitude, and take their brother out of the hands of his kidnappers, and set him at liberty. On the morning of the sixth of March, 1770, the day after the Boston Massacre, Faneuil Hall could not hold the town-meeting. They adjourned to the Old South, and demanded "the immediate removal of the troops;" at sundown there was "not a red-coat in Boston." But the people in this case did no such thing.

The next thing was for the Vigilance Committee to deliver the man: the country has never forgiven the committee for not doing it. I am chairman of the executive committee of the Vigilance Committee; I cannot now relate all that was done, all that was attempted. I will tell that when the time comes. Yet I think you will believe me when I say the Vigilance Committee did all they could. But see some of the difficulties in their way.

There was in Boston a large number of crafty, rich, designing, and "respectable" men, who wanted a man kidnapped in Boston, and sent into slavery; they wanted