Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1844-06-07
From the Western Citizen.
Echo from the Den.
Kno~ County jail, April 80, 1914.
No. l..

Here am 1; shut up in dismal, gloomy prison;
derded, scoffed at, Knocked by the giddy and the
thoughtless. And for what? Why am torn from
the bosom of my beloved family, and shut up like
the vlest teon in the common prison? What dark
stain upon my conscience, or my character, de-
mands this incarceration from the justice of my
country?-my country-to whose redemption from
the fouest of her sins have especially devoted the
lasE eight years Of my toilsome pilgrimage. With
whnt foul crime am charged? OF what damning
sNllt suspecta = OF opening my door to the way
Worn aud beN eitraveler! Ofgiving protection
ttossho ffiendla sther, and her fatherless child
rem! Understanding the statutory enactmens of
our State Legislature, which require me to forswear
my allegiance the King of kings, by trampling
under foot his command to feed the hungry, and
minister to the necessities ofthe suffering Ofre-
fusing to turn bloodhound at the beck of petty ty-
rants, to howl upon the track ofhuman game, and
seize and return the escaping victims Of unearthy
despotism! These, these are the crimes laid to
my charge
In what age and country do we live, that it
should be accounted the blacklist of crimes to feed
the hungry and shelter the houseless? Is this pa
gan Rome, and this the reign of Nero, or DOmit
ian, or CalliguIa! Truly, in our race of nfamy,
1--WE, ''the pc pe Of Illinois," have completely dis
tanced the madness of CaIligula, and the blood
thirsty spirit of Nero. In our fiery zeal to pluck
down the vengeance of Almighty God on our dcvo-
ted land, we have even outstripped the frenzy Of
Julian the apostae. In the days of those tyrants,
Christians required to sacrifice animals, to
ensure the favor of imaginary deities; but in our
time it is demanded of us to sacrifice the UNPRoTEcT-
ED WIDOW and the HELPLESS ORPHAN to appease
the wrath of SLAVEHOLDING DEMONS
In whose name, and by whose authority, ask, is
this hgh-handed despotism inflicted? and the drea
ry and wet walls of my prison answer, GIN THE
NAME, AND BY THE AUTHORITY OF
THE STATE OF ILLINOTS"!!! The peo-
pie Of Illinois, large proportion of them, (and es
pecally the citizens of Knox County. by whose "a
gency this tyranny is executed the descendants of
the pilgrims, who cast themselves houseless exies
upon the rock-bound cost of New England, to es-
cape from the crushing despotsm of Europe,
they whose peace is disturbed, and sohose dignity
is ansulLed by extending the rights of Hospitality to
the pennyless traveller, who, like our ancestors,
would seek on foreign soil an asylum from the
soul-king tyranny of our own country
1t was not so, when band of midnight ruffians
in the same county, laid wait for and assaulted me
with rifles, and other deadly weapons. No peace
disturbed-no dignity insulted them. The nerpe-
traitors of that midnight outrage walk abroad I'M
whipped of justice, and are selected by the Com
missioner's Court, term after term, with but one
exception from that day to this, to make up the
panel of Jurors. No Indictment, then, though the
evidence of the facts was fully before the Grand
jury by the testimony and boasts Of the assaants
themselves. Butperhaps the Grand Jury thought
like the Dutch justice, who would not record judy
ment on the confession of the defendant, "because
he was such liar no man could believe him." But
when the hungry are fed, and the wanderers shell
tered, the case is far otherwise. Then the jury
room becomes one vast horncts'ncst; and wo to the
luckless wight on whose head their ire may chance
to fall especially when their bloodhound scent is
quckened by the fumes of ''peach BRANDY"
From what land of chains. and cowskins comes
I this impious claim to chateliZe human belngs!-
l At whose beck, and for whose benefit is this NIGH
ty holocaust to be offered? Alas! the claim is set
up in the Indictment, for the ownership of human
bodies and souls in the prairie State; and Andrew
Borders, of the State of Illinois, is represented &C
cordng ''to the form of the Statute in such case
made and provided,' as "the laagfuI gunner" Of
these immortals, for whom Christ died.
Away, then, with all this trumpery ofvain boas-
ting about liberty and equal light. Illinois is Gf
not constitutonally) in law, and in fact, slave
State, as is abundanty proved by the acts OF her
| Legislature, the presentments of her Jurles, the
decisions of her courts, the rolls of her marshals
Up, then, to the rescue. The slave on our own
beautiful prairies sends up his cry Of agony COM
} mingled with the wall from tobacco fields of Viz
r ginia and Missouri and the death shrek from the
cane-brakes of Louisiana, and the cotton fields and
| rice swamps of Georgia and Alabama.
cup, then, in Freedoms manly part,
From grey beard old to fiery youth,
And on the nations naked heart
Scatter the living Goals of Truth"
O'Clock p. M The sheriff has just visited me
land informs me # have any food, must tlrn'st
4 myself another glorious feature of pro-slavery
nIjurisdiction to incarcerate man in prison for us
ing hospitality, and then tell him to support him
self, or die! But for myself, have no complaint
To the spirit of the laws and of those who execute
:, them, would fix the public gaze. | am yet far
SHELTER off, than the poor slave or even the free