The southern press. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1850-1852, 1850-07-20

man, and the only issue to the jury is, whether
the captured fugitive is the Stare property Of
the person who claims him Why the whole
thing is but mockery and an insult
mockery, because the verdict would be but
a legal form for announcing foregone con-
clusion; and an insult, because it aims at the
extinction Of the rigat it Processes to secure.
The only grievances brought to the notice Of
Congress (and they Of long standing and
rapidly on the increase) were the practices
of citizens from the free States entising slaves
from their owners, protecting, concealing and
succouring them, screening them from arrest,
rescuing them from capture, and subjecting
the claimants in quest Of them to the harrass-
ments and perils Of mobs and murderers.
These grievances are real and acknowledged
so to be, and luries have no functions appro-
pirate to their prevention. They could not
be needed to inspect the title papers Of
claimants and to revise the decisions Of Judges
or Commissioners ordering the delivery Of
fugitive slaves, for Mr. Webster bears testi-
mony, that never in single instance in sixty
years, has any one of those officials COM
mittcd mistake in surrendering a fugitive
to claimant who was not a slave and not
his owner. Jury-trials there not being
Udnted for the security Of claimants against
the distractions to reclamations, not being
needed for the security Of fugitive slaves from
the arts and devices Of simulated owner
ship, can be insisted on or desired but for
the one lawless purpose, Of freeing the slave
and despoiling the master, in defiance OF the
proofs and in breach of the Constitution 1t
may be said, indeed, that juries in the free
States have occasionally given exemplary
damages against persons who have rescued
fugitive slaves from capture, and so they
have but that makes very different issue
in their eyes, from that which shall involve
the liberty or slavery for life time Of a hui
man being before them, pleading for freedom
and imploring their sympathies. Rest as
sured, that jury's verdict in free State,
surrendering up fugitive slave to bondage
for life, will be one Of those marvellous vani-
ties, which no one now alive is likely to wit
ness. doubt me much, if it be ever put to
the test; for what Southerner of sense, would
throw away his money in so hopeless and
perilous an enterprise, as the pursuit and
rescue of his slave from the hands Of the
spoier, through verdict from jurors who
held, that mans freedom is a gift he was
born with, and which all the paper titles in
the world could neither disprove nor take
away. Yet all the appearances are, that
without such verdict, he cannot have his
slaves, for abolition arts, and mobs, and MUIR
derers, have long since made the provisions
Of the existing law important for service and
mockery to claimants, and so long as the
South will endure her expressions, Congress
will pass no law upon the subject, which
shall not be nullity on its face, through the
foreone verdicts of enfranchisement it will
prognosticate and point to from the free soil
juries. The fugitives will increase, the
perils Of capture will multiply, pursuits
will be rarer and reclamations out of the
question. The debt Of $22, 200, 900 will
remain unpaid, and the citizens Of the free
States, without the shadow Of pretext or Of
a use to apply it to, but in mere wantonness
and mischief, will combine to take our pro-
perty from US at the rate of upwards Of
$685. 900 per annum
The case is unexampled in all the world.
No civilized people have ever before, and for
50 long series Of years, oppressed another
as the North have oppressed the South, and
none upon the face Of the earth have sub
mitted, or would have submitted as the South
has. In every year of such unprovoked ag-
gressions, the men Of the Revolution would
have found justification if not necessity
for prompt and bloody revolt-if their gall
liant and victorious resistance to slighter
wrongs, against infinitely vaster odds than
now contrast the military strength and re-
sources of the North and South, is proof of
a spirit that would not brook oppression, and
dare all for their rights, whatever the risk.
Nor is there trace in sught that history has
taken charge of in the career of our brethren
of the North, which proves or suggests that
they would have borne with tythe Of the
expressions VIII ch the South has submitted to
from them All look. otherwise from the
lights that are before u.s. Shay's rebellion
in New England-tbe whisky instruction
Of Pennsylvania-the stealthy treasons in
embryo at Hartford, amply attest their aptness
for resistance and revolt even against their
own brethren, wherever they can make even
fancied aggressions put on the semblance of
real wrongs. Why, what are they doing
now' Are they not urging on the Govern
ment to the point Of rupture with foreign
country, 10 recover the paltry value of
yankee privateer, which Great Britain seized
in the port Of Fayal forty years ago. Por-
tugal never laid hands upon the property, nor
connlved at it-nor consented to it. She
was neutral to the war-neutral to the cap
ture, and powerless to prevent it. And if
mere constructive liability for the payment
of $4,000, could thus rouse the North's
ire to the fighting point, who could predest-
nate her forbearance when coming to the
knowledge, that Southerners, year by year,
were prowling past her borders and driving
of her aocks and herds to the value of $780,
600 per annum3 Who could doubt her al
ternatives: payment for the property and
cessation Of the wrongs, or civil war? No