The jailor of Savannah some time since reported TEN STEWARDS as being in his custody. These were free citizens of other States, deprived of their liberty solely on account of the complexion their Maker had given them, and in direct violation of the express language of the Federal Constitution. If any free negro or mulatto enters the State of Mississippi, for any cause however urgent, any white citizen may cause him to be punished by the Sheriff with thirty-nine lashes, and if he does not immediately thereafter leave the State, he is SOLD AS A SLAVE.
In Maryland, a free negro or mulatto, coming into the State, is fined $20, and if he returns he is fined $500, and on default of payment, is sold AS A SLAVE. Truly indeed have the slaveholders rendered the Constitution a blurred, obliterated, and tattered parchment. But whenever this same Constitution can, by the grossest perversion, be made instrumental in upholding and perpetuating human bondage, then it acquires, for the time, a marvellous sanctity in their eyes, and they are seized with a holy indignation at the very suspicion of its profanation.
The readiness with which Southern Governors prefer the most false and audacious claims, under color of Constitutional authority, exhibits a state of society in which truth and honor are but little respected.
In 1833, seventeen slaves effected their escape from Virginia in a boat, and finally reached New York. To recover their slaves _as such_, a judicial investigation in New York would be necessary, and the various claimants would be required to prove their property. A more convenient mode presented itself. The Governor of Virginia made a requisition on the Executive of New York for them as fugitive _felons_, and on this requisition, a warrant was issued for their arrest and surrender. The pretended felony was stealing the _boat_ in which they had escaped.
In 1839, a slave escaped from Virginia on board of a vessel bound to New York. It was _suspected_, but without a particle of proof, that some of the crew had favored his escape; and immediately the master made oath that _three_ of the sailors, naming them, had feloniously STOLEN the slave; and the Governor, well knowing there was no slave-market in New York, and that no man could there be held in slavery, had the hardihood to demand the surrender of the mariners, on the charge of grand larceny; and, in his correspondence with the Governor of New York, declared the slave was worth six or seven hundred dollars, and remarked that _stealing_ was "recognized as a CRIME by all laws, human and divine."