[3] For the facts on this subject, see the admirable work by Charles Sumner, entitled "White Slavery in the Barbary States."
Washington Madison performed a similar exploit on board an American coast slaver, and arrived, with a large number of his fellow-slaves, in the British West Indies. Mr. Webster, then Secretary of State, officially demanded of the British government the surrender of this heroic man as a MURDERER.
In 1793, there were one hundred and fifteen American slaves in Algiers, held by as perfect and Scriptural a tenure as any slave is now held in any part of our wide republic. Had one of these slaves made his escape by killing his Algerine master, would any of our patriotic divines, would any gentleman of the "New York Union Committee of Safety," would even Mr. Webster himself, have pronounced him a murderer? Had the captain of a British ship favored his escape, and given him a passage to Boston, would your colleague, the Honorable Mr. Brooks, have accused him of slave-stealing? Is it not possible, Sir, that, with very many of our casuists and moralists, questions of conscience are decided according to the tincture of a skin?
I will now ask your attention to some of the political consequences resulting from the late measures in which you rejoice, and for which you voted. No sooner had Congress made the required concessions to the slave power, than the advocates of those measures claimed the glory of having given peace to the country, and perpetuity to the Union. Mr. Webster, as one of the chief agents in this blessed consummation, received the congratulations of a crowd in Washington. In his reply he observed,--"Truly, gentlemen, the last two days have been great days. A work has been accomplished which dissipates doubts and alarms, puts an end to angry controversies, fortifies the Constitution of the country, and strengthens the bond of the Union.
'Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer;.... And all the clouds that lowered upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.'"
The glorious summer anticipated by the orator proved cold and brief, and if the lowering clouds were indeed buried in the ocean, the sea has given up its dead. Never before, since the organization of the government, has such a tempest of indignation swept over the land. Never before, in a single instance, has there been manifested throughout the religious portion of the community, of all creeds and names, such a settled determination in the fear of God to withhold obedience to a law of the land. The sentiments of the great mass of the people of the free States, exclusive of the commercial cities, are briefly but emphatically embodied in a resolution of the Common Council of Chicago, viz.:--"The Fugitive Slave Act recently passed by Congress is revolting to our moral sense, and an outrage on our feelings of justice and humanity, because it disregards all the securities which the Constitution and laws have thrown around personal liberty, and its direct tendency is to alienate the people from their love and reverence for the government and institutions of our country."