Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/478

, whose report justified some of the epithets. Governor Williams, of South Carolina, in a message to the legislature, denounced "this [sic]remorsless and merciless traffic, this  [sic]ceasless dragging along the streets and highways of a crowd of suffering victims to minister to insatiable avarice," as condemned alike by "enlightened humanity, wise policy and the prayers of the just." The legislature accordingly passed an act forbidding the introduction of slaves from abroad; which was repealed, however, in two years.

About this time the American Colonization Society sprung into existence, as related in a former chapter.

The new state of Mississippi was admitted into the Union December 10, 1817. By one of the provisions of its constitution, grand juries were dispensed with in the indictment of slaves; and slaves were not allowed trial by jury except in capital cases.

At the session of 1817-18, the Maryland Quakers sent in a petition to congress praying further provisions for the security of free persons of color against the increased danger of being kidnapped, growing out of the domestic slave-trade. The Quaker memorial was referred, and Burrell, of Rhode Island, moved instructions to the committee, also to inquire into the expediency of additional provisions for the suppression of the African slave-trade, and especially of concert with other nations for that purpose.

At this session, Pindall, of Virginia, obtained a committee, which brought in a bill to give new stringency to the old fugitive slave act. The bill provided for assimilating the proceedings in the case of fugitives from labor to those in the case of fugitives from justice. The claimant, having made out a title before some judge of his own state, was then to be entitled to an executive demand on the governor of the state where the fugitive was, with the imposition of heavy penalties upon those who refused to aid in the arrest.

Strong, Fuller, and Whitman, of Massachusetts, Williams, of Connecticut, Livermore, of New Hampshire, and several Pennsylvania representatives, warmly opposed this bill, as going entirely beyond the constitutional provision on the subject of fugitives from labor. The old law, in their opinion, went quite far enough already. The. personal rights of one class of citizens were not to be trampled upon to secure the rights of property of other citizens. The question of servitude ought to be tried in the state where the fugitive was. A motion was made by Sergeant to modify the bill in accordance with this idea; but it did not succeed. On the other hand, the bill was supported by Cobb, of Georgia, as a right of the slaveholders secured by the constitution, by Mr. Speaker Clay, and by Baldwin, of Pennsylvania. The bill was also supported by Holmes, of Massachusetts, by Storrs, of New York, who thought that, for the sake of union and harmony, northern men must learn to sacrifice their prejudices; and by Mason, the new Boston representative, who professed, indeed, a personal interest in the question, from his fear lest, if the bill failed to pass, his own town of Boston might be inconveniently infested by southern runaways. Thus sustained, the bill passed the house, 84 to 69. Among the yeas were ten from New York, still a slaveholding state, five from