2. Here is another illustration, of a different character. Free persons of color, citizens of Massachusetts, and, according to the institutions of this Commonwealth, entitled to equal privileges with other citizens, being in service as mariners, and touching at the port of Charleston, in South Carolina, have been seized, and, with no allegation against them, except of entering this port in the discharge of their rightful business, have been cast into prison, and there detained during the stay of the vessel. This is by virtue of a statute of South Carolina, passed in 1822, which further declares, that, in the failure of the captain to pay the expenses, these freemen “shall be deemed and taken as absolute slaves,” one moiety of the proceeds of their sale to belong to the sheriff. Against all remonstrance,--against the official opinion of Mr. Wirt, as Attorney-General of the United States, declaring it unconstitutional,--against the solemn judgment of Mr. Justice Johnson, of the Supreme Court of the United States, himself a Slave-Master and citizen of South Carolina, also pronouncing it unconstitutional,[99]--this statute, which is an obvious injury to Northern ship-owners, as it is an outrage to the mariners whom it seizes, has been upheld to this day by South Carolina. Massachusetts, anxious to obtain for her people that protection which was denied, and especially to save them from the dread penalty of being sold into Slavery, appointed a citizen of South Carolina as her agent for this purpose, and in her behalf to bring suits in the Circuit Court of the United States to try the constitutionality of this pretension. Owing to the sensitiveness of the people in that State, the agent declined to render this simple service. Massachusetts next selected one of her own sons, a venerable citizen, who had already served with honor in the other House of Congress, and was of admitted eminence as a lawyer, the Hon. Samuel Hoar, of Concord, to visit Charleston, and there do what the agent first appointed shrank from doing. This excellent gentleman, beloved by all who knew him, gentle in manners as he was firm in character, with a countenance that was in itself a letter of recommendation, arrived at Charleston, accompanied only by his daughter. Straightway all South Carolina was convulsed. According to a story in Boswell’s Johnson, all the inhabitants at St. Kilda, a remote island of the Hebrides, on the approach of a stranger, “catch cold”[100]; but in South Carolina it is fever that they catch. The Governor at the time, who was none other than one of her present Senators [Mr. HAMMOND], made his arrival the subject of special message to the Legislature, which I have before me; the Legislature all caught the fever, and swiftly adopted resolutions calling upon his Excellency the Governor “to expel from our territory the said agent, after due notice to depart,” and promising to “sustain the Executive authority