Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/220

208 was against them. They saw four hundred citizens of Boston flee off for safety; they saw Shadrach captured in Boston; they saw him kidnapped, and put in jail against their own law; they saw the streets filled with soldiers to break the laws of Massachusetts, the police of Boston employed in the same cause; they saw the sheriffs refuse to serve a writ; they saw Thomas Sims kidnapped and carried from Boston; and, in all the five months of the session, they did not pass a law to protect their fellow-citizens; they did not even pass a "resolution" against the extension of slavery! The Senate had a committee to investigate the affair in Boston. They sat in the Senate-hall, and were continually insulted by the vulgarest of men; insulted not only with impudence, but impunity, by men who confessed that they were violating the laws of Massachusetts.

Massachusetts had then a governor who said he "would not harbour a fugitive slave." What did he do? He sat as idle as a feather in the chair of state; he left the sheriffs as idle as he. While the laws of Massachusetts were broken nine days running, the successor of John Hancock sat as idle as a feather in the chair of state, and let kidnapping go on! I hate to say these things. The governor is a young man, not without virtues; but think of such things in Massachusetts!

This is my public defence of the Vigilance Committee. The private defence shall come, if I live long enough.

It was on the nineteenth day of April that Thomas Sims was landed at Savannah, and put in the public jail of the city. Do you know what that day stands for in your calendar? Some of your fathers knew very well. Ten miles from here is a little monument at Lexington, "sacred to liberty and the rights of mankind," telling that on the 19th of April, 1775, some noble men stood up against the army of England, "fired the shot heard round the world,'^ and laid down their lives "in the sacred cause of God and their country." Six miles further off is another little monument at Concord; two miles further back, a third, all dating from the same day. The war of revolution began at Lexington, to end at Yorktown. Its first battle was on the nineteenth of April. Hancock and Adams lodged at Lexington with the minister. One raw morning, a little