The Trial of Theodore Parker: For the "Misdemeanor" of a Speech in Faneuil Hall against Kidnapping, before the Circuit Court of the United States, at Boston, April 3, 1855, with the DefenceParker, Theodore
Religion
The Trial of Theodore Parker: For the "Misdemeanor" of a Speech in Faneuil Hall against Kidnapping, before the Circuit Court of the United States, at Boston, April 3, 1855, with the Defence
Parker, Theodore
Antislavery movements -- Massachusetts -- Boston; United States -- Fugitive slave law (1850)
"Who put Slavery in the Constitution; made it Federal? who
put it in the new States? who got new soil to plant it in?
who carried it across the Mississippi--into Louisiana,
Florida, Texas, Utah, New Mexico? who established it in the
Capital of the United States? who adopted Slavery and
volunteered to catch a runaway, in 1793, and repeated the
act in 1850,--in defiance of all law, all precedent, all
right? Why, it was the North. 'Spain armed herself with
bloodhounds,' said Mr. Pitt, 'to extirpate the wretched
natives of America.' In 1850, the Christian Democracy set
worse bloodhounds afoot to pursue Ellen Craft; offered them
five dollars for the run, if they did not take her; ten if
they did! The price of blood was Northern money; the
bloodhounds--they were Kidnappers born at the North, bred
there, kennelled in her church, fed on her sacraments,
blessed by her priests! In 1778, Mr. Pitt had a yet harsher
name for the beasts wherewith despotic Spain hunted the red
man in the woods--he called them '_Hell Hounds_.' But they
only hunted 'savages, heathens, men born in barbarous
lands.' What would he say of the pack which in 1851 hunted
American Christians, in the 'Athens of America,' and stole a
man on the grave of Hancock and Adams--all Boston looking
on, and its priests blessing the deed!"
"See what encourages the South to make new encroachments.
She has been eminently successful in her former demands,
especially with the last. The authors of the fugitive slave
bill did not think that enormity could be got through
Congress: it was too atrocious in itself, too insulting to
the North. But Northern men sprang forward to defend
it--powerful politicians supported it to the fullest extent.
The worse it was, the better they liked it. Northern
merchants were in favor of it--it 'would conciliate the
South.' Northern ministers in all the churches of commerce
baptized it, defended it out of the Old Testament, or the
New Testament. The Senator of Boston gave it his mighty
aid,--he went through the land a huckster of Slavery,
peddling Atheism: the Representative of Boston gave it his
vote. Their constituents sustained both! All the great
cities of the North executed the bill. The leading Journals
of Boston advised the merchants to withhold all commercial
intercourse from Towns which opposed Kidnapping. There was a
'Union Meeting' at Faneuil Hall. You remember the men on the
platform: the speeches are not forgotten. The doctrine that
there is a Law of God above the passions of the multitude
and the ambition of their leaders, was treated with scorn
and hooting: a loud guffaw of vulgar ribaldry went up
against the Justice of the Infinite God! All the great
cities did the same. Atheism was inaugurated as the first
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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