worse than useless, and permits the laws of the State to go
unexecuted. Perhaps I do not know what are the duties of a Governor;
but if to be a Governor requires to subject one's self to so much
ignominy without remedy, if it is to put a restraint upon my
manhood, I shall take care never to be Governor of Massachusetts. I
have not read far in the statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not
profitable reading. They do not always say what is true; and they do
not always mean what they say. What I am concerned to know is, that
that man's influence and authority were on the side of the
slaveholder, and not of the slave- of the guilty, and not of the
innocent- of injustice, and not of justice. I never saw him of whom
I speak; indeed, I did not know that he was Governor until this
event occurred. I heard of him and Anthony Burns at the same time, and
thus, undoubtedly, most will hear of him. So far am I from being
governed by him. I do not mean that it was anything to his discredit
that I had not heard of him, only that I heard what I did. The worst I
shall say of him is, that he proved no better than the majority of his
constituents would be likely to prove. In my opinion, be was not equal
to the occasion.

  The whole military force of the State is at the service of a Mr.
Suttle, a slaveholder from Virginia, to enable him to catch a man whom
he calls his property; but not a soldier is offered to save a
citizen of Massachusetts from being kidnapped! Is this what all
these soldiers, all this training, have been for these seventy-nine
years past? Have they been trained merely to rob Mexico and carry back
fugitive slaves to their masters?

  These very nights I heard the sound of a drum in our streets.
There were men training still; and for what? I could with an effort
pardon the cockerels of Concord for crowing still, for they,
perchance, had not been beaten that morning; but I could not excuse
this rub-a-dub of the "trainers." The slave was carried back by
exactly such as these; i.e., by the soldier, of whom the best you
can say in this connection is that he is a fool made conspicuous by
a painted coat.

  Three years ago, also, just a week after the authorities of Boston
assembled to carry back a perfectly innocent man, and one whom they
knew to be innocent, into slavery, the inhabitants of Concord caused
the bells to be rung and the cannons to be fired, to celebrate their
liberty- and the courage and love of liberty of their ancestors who
fought at the bridge. As if those three millions had fought for the
right to be free themselves, but to hold in slavery three million
others. Nowadays, men wear a fool's-cap, and call it a liberty-cap.
I do not know but there are some who, if they were tied to a
whipping-post, and could but get one hand free, would use it to ring
the bells and fire the cannons to celebrate their liberty. So some
of my townsmen took the liberty to ring and fire. That was the
extent of their freedom; and when the sound of the bells died away,
their liberty died away also; when the powder was all expended,
their liberty went off with the smoke.

  The joke could be no broader if the inmates of the prisons were to
subscribe for all the powder to be used in such salutes, and hire
the jailers to do the firing and ringing for them, while they
enjoyed it through the grating.

  This is what I thought about my neighbors.

  Every humane and intelligent inhabitant of Concord, when he or she
heard those bells and those cannons, thought not with pride of the
events of the 19th of April, 1775, but with shame of the events of the
12th of April, 1851. But now we have half buried that old shame
under a new one.

  Massachusetts sat waiting Mr. Loring's decision, as if it could in
any way affect her own criminality. Her crime, the most conspicuous
and fatal crime of all, was permitting him to be the umpire in such
a case. It was really the trial of Massachusetts. Every moment that
she hesitated to set this man free, every moment that she now
hesitates to atone for her crime, she is convicted. The Commissioner
on her case is God; not Edward G. God, but simply God.

  I wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the human law may
be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act
of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay
the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts
injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the
laughing-stock of the world.

  Much has been said about American slavery, but I think that we do
not even yet realize what slavery is. If I were seriously to propose
to Congress to make mankind into sausages, I have no doubt that most
of the members would smile at my proposition, and if any believed me
to be in earnest, they would think that I proposed something much
worse than Congress had ever done. But if any of them will tell me
that to make a man into a sausage would be much worse- would be any
worse- than to make him into a slave- than it was to enact the
Fugitive Slave Law- I will accuse him of foolishness, of
intellectual incapacity, of making a distinction without a difference.
The one is just as sensible a proposition as the other.

  I hear a good deal said about trampling this law under foot. Why,
one need not go out of his way to do that. This law rises not to the
level of the head or the reason; its natural habitat is in the dirt.
It was born and bred, and has its life, only in the dust and mire,
on a level with the feet; and he who walks with freedom, and does
not with Hindoo mercy avoid treading on every venomous reptile, will
inevitably tread on it, and so trample it under foot- and Webster, its