Minnesota weekly times. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1854-1859, 1856-09-13
southern =" Law ana ord.r.,,

The New York Tribune thus speaks of the re-
cent mobbing of Messrs. Strickland & Upson,
booksellers, in Mobile, for the alleged 6 crime'
Of selling copy ef Douglas Life: a
Frederick Douglas was born a slave on Mary
land plantation, never knew his father, lost his
mother while still child, and was subjected to
the toughest usage as field hand and ship caulk-
er until he was about twenty years Of age, when
he ran away from bondage and began to work
his own way through the world. Though all the
education he ever had was obtained bv stealth
it being utterly forbidden by such law and gospel
as they have in Maryland to teach slave to read
the Bible-and though belonging to a race Of
which it is currently reported that the individuals
6 cannot take care of themselves" he has
achieved fair living ever since, whereas one
chief recollection of his boyhood is that of per-
petual hunger and an insuf6ciency of the coarsest
food. g g 20 'o' 500 iaJa'
Frederick Douglas has written the record of his
life, entitled &c My Bondage and My Freedom" +"
the essential truth of which no man controverts.
This record of a poor slaves infancy and boy
hood, of his self-emancipation, and of his SUBJ
sequent free manhood, forms volume which
many thousands have read with profound interest
and a swelling hope of nobler and happier fu-
ture for his long crushed and down-trodden race.
But the Slave Power cannot afford to have MIR.
Douglass Memoir circulated and read in its dark
dcminionS. 1t cannot answer him, but it can mob
and maltreat those who circulate his book. This
it has just done to Messrs. Strickland & Upson,
the Mobile stationers. Their ofense, for which
they have been chased out of Mobile, consists
simply in selling copies of Douglass book to those
who asked for it. ssThe very head and front of
their offending hath this extent-no more." They
live by selling books; and, this book being in
demand, they procured some copies of it and
kept it for sale to those who asked for it. They
did not advertise uor placard it; and, although a
pretense is set up that a copy was sold to slave,
we see no evidence of this. ,a II aa
We assume it to be fact that Slavery cannot
afford to let Douglass Memoir be circulated
among its victims wherefore we do not blame
its votaries for suppressing that work. The
wrong is in Slavery itself, not in the suppression
Of truth and free discussion which its existence
requires. We do not blame the magnates of Mo-
bile, then, for stopping the sale Of GO Bondage
and My Freedom" but for stopping it by vio-
lence and outrage. If there be laws in Alabama
against the circulation of such books, let them
be duly applied and enforced. The fact that no
legal process was issued against these booksel-
lers, no indictment found, and no writ issued,
justi6es presumption that there is really no law
of Alabama which makes the diffusion Of Anti
Slavery books an offense, and that the whole pro-
ceediug against Strickland & Epson has been in
violation of law. If Slavery thinks it can afford
thus to disregard and override the laws which it
makes and absolutely controls, SO be it; but We
think it commits grave error.