“Oh! the hardships this law has brought upon the fugitives from slavery that have sought an asylum with us! I attended the other day a meeting of Baptist ministers in Rochester. There was a colored brother there in the depths of distress. He arose in our midst and gave voice to the agonies of his soul. A few years since he escaped from one of the richest slaveholders in Kentucky. With him, he had been brought up in ignorance. Since coming among us he had learnt to read, and had become so well educated as to be able to teach others. In the course of two years he had gathered a church in a meeting-house that had been built mainly by his instrumentality. He had a comfortable homestead in Rochester, and a happy family about him. But now his master had sent for him, declaring he would have him under this law. ‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘what have I done? what is my crime? All the power and cunning and sagacity of this great nation are moving to drag me back again into slavery,--worse than death.’ His head fell upon his bosom, he sobbed aloud, and we wept with him, and a deep groan of execration went up from the souls of us all to the God of mercy against this law.” This recital awakened intense feeling throughout our meeting and murmurs of indignation. “And now,” Mr. Raymond continued, “suppose that while we were glowing with sympathy for that brother and abhorrence of the law,--suppose the man-thief had come into that meeting and put his hand upon that brother to bear him off to the South. What would have been the result? I tell you we would have defended him, if we had had to tear that man-thief in pieces.” This was received with great applause. “What,” continued Mr. Raymond, “what if the officers should come here and put their hand on me as one claimed to be the property of another man, would you let me go?” “No! No!! No!!!” from every quarter was the hearty response. “And yet why not me as readily as a man of darker skin? If ever there was a law which it was right to trample upon, it is this. You are counselling revolution, some may say. Revolution indeed! O, my fellow-citizens, blood has been flowing, not in battle-fields, but from the backs of our enslaved countrymen ever since 1776, and is flowing now. [Deep sensation.] Yes, and that blood has gone up to Heaven and provoked God against us. Yes, and blood will flow profusely on the battle-fields of a civil war if we carry out this accursed law,--if we do not proclaim freedom throughout the land.”