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)
Gentlemen, I have shown you what the Slave Power of America aims
at,--a Despotism which is worse for this age than the Stuarts' tyranny
for that time. You see its successive steps of encroachment. Behold
what it has done within ten years. It has made Slavery perpetual in
Florida; has annexed Texas, a Slave State as big as the kingdom of
France; has fought the Mexican War, with Northern money, and spread
bondage over Utah, New Mexico, and California; it has given Texas ten
millions of Northern dollars to help Slavery withal; it has passed the
fugitive slave bill and kidnapped men in the West, in the Middle
States, and even in our own New England; it has given ten millions of
dollars for a little strip of worthless land, the Mesilla valley,
whereon to make a Slave Railroad and carry bondage from the Atlantic
to the Pacific; it has repealed the Prohibition of Slavery, and spread
the mildew of the South all over Kansas and Nebraska. Ask your
capitalists, who have bought Missouri lands and railroads, how their
stock looks just now; not only your Liberty but even their Money is in
peril. You know the boast of Mr. Toombs. Gentlemen, you know what the
United States Courts have done--with poisoned weapons they have struck
deadly blows at Freedom. You know Sharkey and Grier and Kane. You
recollect the conduct of Kidnappers' Courts at Milwaukie, Sandusky,
Cincinnati, Philadelphia--in the Hall of Independence. But why need I
wander so far? Alas! you know too well what has been done in Boston,
our own Boston, the grave of Puritan piety. You remember the Union
Meeting, Ellen Craft, Sims, chains around the Court House, the Judges
crawling under, soldiers in the street, drunk, smiting at the
citizens; you do not forget Anthony Burns, the Marshal's guard, the
loaded cannon in place of Justice, soldiers again in the streets
smiting at and wounding the citizens. You recollect all this--the 19th
of April, 1851, Boston delivering an innocent man at Savannah to be a
slave for ever, and that day scourged in his jail while the hirelings
who enthralled him were feasted at their Inn;--Anniversary week last
year--a Boston Judge of Probate, the appointed guardian of orphans,
kidnapping a poor and friendless man! You cannot forget these things,
no, never!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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