Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1851-01-16
Obedience to the Fugitive Slave
J,au

The editors of the Independent having been
charged with encouraging rebellion and murder
by the course they have pursued in relation to
the Fugitive Slave Law make The following
supposilion and statements as explanatory and
in justification of their course:--
We have a respectable and industrious neigh
Dor, member perhaps OF our own church, with
wife and young family dependent upon him,
and little property accumulated about him.
His history is this:
He was stolen from Africa and brought 10 this
country, or his father was before him, by pi-
ratcal slave trader, who would be condemned
to death TO morrow, in Virginia ITSELF fconvict-
ed of the act. For the pecuniary profit of this
pirate, and without any consent on his own part
he was transferred from the slaye-shp to cot
ton planter in Georgia. He labored for that
planter--being in constant peril from the lash If
he refused-tor many years, with no return,
save of that which was necessary to keep him
serVlceable.
lie was simply captive against his will, and
under the constraint Of keepers and Of the whip,
despoled of the freedom which God had given
him, and with his life and strength continually
used, without the shadow Of natural right, for
the purposeses Of his selfappointed MASTER
From this captivity the Man has escaped He
has come TO the North to it's free schools, Its
free presses its opportunities for the accumna-
ton Of property by enterprise; to all which
makes it a desirable home for him. lie has
married He is rearing a family. He has fell
the power Of religion, and ia a church member
After the dreary and bitter waste of his youthful
yigor and manly strength under the oppression
of Slavery, he has reached at last place ofres
and of personal freedom; where the powers tina
God gave him are at liberty TO develope
where the rights of which ne has been deprived
are his again.
And now the Law says to that man. Yol
shall go back to this bondage from which you
have escaped Though it be biting and intol
cradle, you shall suffer it again Though We
should hang the man 10 morrow, if we caugh
him in the act who reduced you to it, we shal
force you into it a second time Though TIT
declaration of Independence our fundamental pill
lar Of State, declares all men to be created e
quail and free, and with inaIenable rights, AM
!, though you have never forfeited those rights b,
any crime, we shall take you as you stand, am
rivet upon you the chains Of bondage! Attic
your soul recolls from it, and you fly to the alta
of God for shelter, we will take you thence AM
plunge you a second time into Slavery, unit
Death p
Now, what shall we say to this? We nigh
say that the Legislature which takes this groun,
is inhuman and unchrstian, and proved so b.
the act but we don't. We might say that
1t has covnaneted 10 do an act so criminal, an &C
which involves the very substance of barbarism
it had better break that covenant a thousand time
and give up all that rests upon it, that sin S,
shamelessly and so awfully before God blu
We don't say this. We tell the Man to escap,
his pursuers if he can TO take care to enter in
to no combination with others for organized re
sstance but that if he is hunted down ant
compelled to choose, and it seems to him bette
to die than to be ensaved it Is his right to resist
And we knoto that when we say this. we sa,
whot every freeman says in his heart that he
would do himself in the like emergency HI
impossible TO justify the american Revolution, /
this ground is not Uaid
We say, for ourselves, that we shall not forci
oily resist the law; we shall obey it, if we mus
by taking its penalty. But sooner than do wha
it bids us, for the capture of that poor, industri
Gus, peaceable neighbor-sooner than 90 d steI
toward his dwelling, 10 help reduce hun to
slavery, the very thought of which makes hi
soul tremble-every year in the Jail shall b
multiplied by thousand, and every ring in tn
, chain shall be made Of hot iron, and we wi
+ bear them freely. We would not have the aw
I full guilt, and the Divine curse, of such an &C
on our SOUL for hundred Constitutions.
If this is murder and rebellion we saw. a
Patrick Hen ysaid, when somebody cried, Tres
| son. against hun: Make the most of it, It
murder and rebellion, which are strangely {
aud increasingly popular among religious me
! at The North, and which will have been incol
3 polated into Law before many years!
The above is scarcely an imaginary cose.-
An intelligent Elder in Presbyterian Churc
in Brooklyn asked a clergyman there few day
since what his duty was under the Law Fc
, ii he must obey it he should be compelled, wit
. his children, to help bind bind his Wife, whe
! the Southerner came for her.