Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/261

 as fresh as at the moment of the seizure, and I walked straight to the court room to which I had been carried, with as little doubt, hesitation, or uncertainty as if it had all happened the day before. There were a number of prisoners at the bar, the room was crowded with spectators, and a trial or examination of evident interest was going on. It soon appeared, that the prisoners were charged with having sacked and plundered a number of houses, whose occupants were suspected to be tainted with abolitionism, and of having, in the same spirit, burnt down an African church. The feeling in the court room seemed, however, altogether in favor of the prisoners, and such, as far as I could judge by the newspapers, and the conversations which I heard, was the current opinion of the city. The prevailing idea seemed to be, that the persons really guilty of the riots were those who had suffered by them, since it was their pestilent, unpopular opinions which had stirred up the mob to sack and plunder their houses.

What I saw in New York and Boston served to cure me of an error, as to America, sufficiently common. I had supposed that in the free states, so called, there was really some freedom. I knew indeed, by my own experience, that no asylum was to be found there by refugee slaves from the southern states; but I had imagined that the native-born inhabitants did enjoy a certain degree of liberty. My mistake in this respect was now very apparent. No one in New York or Boston was at liberty, at the time of my visit, to entertain, or at least publicly to express, any detestation of the system of slavery, or desire or hope for its speedy abolition, under penalty of being visited with the public indignation. Such persons indeed would be lucky if they escaped without insult to their persons, and destruction of their property. The leading politicians, lawyers, and merchants of those cities under whose encouragement and instigation these outrages were inflicted, seemed to stand in no less awe and terror of the anger of the southern